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Meet the 29-year-old woman behind the first photo of a black hole
The Washington Post
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Katherine Bouman had devoted years to the astonishing quest — to help capture the first image of a massive black hole in a distant galaxy, a void so dense no light can escape.

But when the mind-bending breakthrough finally came almost a year ago, the discovery had to stay a secret.

So, after the stunning image was revealed to the world Wednesday, Bouman’s excitement spilled out at what seemed the speed of light.

“We’ve been busting at the seams about what we’ve seen, but we had to keep our mouths shut,” said Bouman, 29, a doctoral graduate of MIT who continued her studies at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

What she and a large team of scientists from MIT, Harvard, and other universities had seen was the first-ever image of a cosmic black hole 53 million light-years away, a time-warping and light-twisting mystery of the universe whose existence Albert Einstein had hinted at a century ago.

The project was directed by Sheperd Doeleman, a senior research fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“We have taken the first picture of a black hole — a one-way door out of our universe,” Doeleman said.

a woman smiling for the camera: Katherine Bouman and her astrophysicist colleagues kept the black hole picture secret for a year for study. © handout Katherine Bouman and her astrophysicist colleagues kept the black hole picture secret for a year for study. On Wednesday, nearly a year after scientists at the Black Hole Initiative in Cambridge applauded their discovery in private, Bouman and 200 other scientists — many of them from the Boston area — finally could speak about what many astronomers and others had thought impossible.

The image was the real thing, confirmed by test after test on data collected from eight radio telescopes around the globe. Finally, even after exhaustive efforts to prove themselves wrong, the discovery stood.

“It’s incredibly exciting. The goal was to see this thing that was essentially impossible to see, about the size of an orange on the moon,” Bouman said.

The project also plumbed the expertise of scientists at MIT’s Haystack Observatory in Westford, Boston University, Brandeis University, and the University of Massachusetts, among others.

Bouman helped develop the algorithms for what is formally called the Event Horizon Telescope project, denoting the point at which light, matter, and other energy fall into the incomprehensible density of a black hole, trapped there for eternity.

While much of the matter around a black hole drops into its vortex, the new image captures the immense, circular shape of gas and dust whirling at the speed of light outside the point of no return.

The black hole in the constellation Virgo is seen as a dark shadow inside that circle, an enormous opening that is the size of our solar system and about 6 billion times the mass of the sun.

The existence of black holes, caused by the collapse of stars, has been known for decades. But Wednesday’s announcement in Washington, D.C., and five other locations around the globe is the first to display an image of a massive black hole.

The positioning of the eight observatories essentially allowed the researchers to turn the rotating Earth into one enormous telescope with extraordinary resolution — about 3 million times sharper than 20/20 vision.

  • Slide 1 of 146: The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. This breakthrough was announced in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5-billion times that of the Sun.
  • Slide 2 of 146: A sun halo shines from the sky above ESO's Paranal Observatory. In the lower right corner the light is reflected from one of the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), ESO's flagship telescope. The VLT is the world's most advanced optical instrument, and the world's most productive ground-based facility, enabling it to take advantage of the 300 clear nights Paranal has per year. As demonstrated in this photograph, however, breathtaking phenomena are not only visible during the night.
  • Slide 3 of 146: This artist’s impression depicts the paths of photons in the vicinity of a black hole. The gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon is the cause of the shadow captured by the Event Horizon Telescope.
  • Slide 4 of 146: This artist’s impression depicts a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disc. This thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole. The black hole is labelled, showing the anatomy of this fascinating object.
  • Slide 5 of 146: Star clusters are commonly featured in cosmic photoshoots, and are also well-loved by the keen eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These large gatherings of celestial gems are striking sights — and the subject of this Picture of the Week, Messier 2, is certainly no exception. Messier 2 is located in the constellation of Aquarius (The Water-Bearer), about 55 000 light-years away. It is a globular cluster, a spherical group of stars all tightly bound together by gravity. With a diameter of roughly 175 light-years, a population of 150 000 stars, and an age of 13 billion years, Messier 2 is one of the largest clusters of its kind and one of the oldest associated with the Milky Way. Most of the cluster’s mass is concentrated at its centre, with shimmering streams of stars extending outwards into space. It is bright enough that it can even be seen with the naked eye when observing conditions are extremely good.
  • Slide 6 of 146: ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this picture of Portugal and Spain from the International Space Station on 6 August 2018. Alexander commented on the photo: "Dramatic weather pattern over Portugal today. Looks like a mixture of dust, sand and smoke." The trio’s landing in the Kazakh steppe marked the successful conclusion of over six months in space during which Alexander conducted over 60 European experiments, became the second ever European commander of the International Space Station, welcomed six resupply vehicles, installed the first commercial facility for research in the Columbus laboratory, delivered an important message on climate change for leaders at the COP24 climate change conference, captured real-time footage of a Soyuz launch abort and much, much more. Horizons was Alexander’s second mission to the International Space Station – the first was Blue Dot in 2014.
  • Slide 7 of 146: The core of massive galaxy M87 as viewed in X-rays by ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory. A giant elliptical galaxy, M87 is home to several trillion stars, making it one of the most massive galaxies in the local Universe. About 52 million light years away, it is located at the centre of the Virgo cluster, the nearest cluster of galaxies to the Local Group, to which our own Milky Way galaxy belongs. A supermassive black hole as massive as billions of stars like our Sun sits at the core of M87, accreting material from its surroundings at an extremely intense rate. The black hole’s accretion produces powerful jets that launch energetic particles close to the speed of light outwards into the surrounding cluster environment, as well as inflating giant bubbles that lift cooler gas from the cluster centre and form the filamentary structures visible in this image. The activity of the black hole also generates shock waves, such as the circular feature that can be seen around the centre of the image. This view is based on data collected at X-ray energies between 0.3 and 7 keV with the EPIC camera onboard XMM-Newton on 16 July 2017. The image spans 40 arcminutes on each side. On 10 April 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) – a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration – presented the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow: the black hole at the core of M87. The EHT observations were also performed in 2017.
  • Slide 8 of 146: From an altitude of 255 miles, an Expedition 59 crewmember photographed the Richat Structure, or the "Eye of the Sahara," in northwestern Mauritania. The circular geologic feature is thought to be caused by an uplifted dome—geologists would classify it as a domed anticline—that has been eroded to expose the originally flat rock layers.
  • Slide 9 of 146: Sensitive to Jupiter's stratospheric temperatures, these infrared images were recorded by the Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (COMICS) at the Subaru Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Scientists used red, blue and yellow to infuse this infrared image; regions of the atmosphere that are more yellow and red indicate the hotter areas. This highlights the auroral heating that occurs at Jupiter's poles, where energy from the solar wind and magnetosphere are deposited. This image was captured on Jan. 12, 2017. This work was supported by a NASA Keck PI Data Award, administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.
  • Slide 10 of 146: Messier 87 (M87) is an enormous elliptical galaxy located about 55 million light years from Earth, visible in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781, but not identified as a galaxy until 20th Century. At double the mass of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and containing as many as ten times more stars, it is amongst the largest galaxies in the local universe. Besides its raw size, M87 has some very unique characteristics. For example, it contains an unusually high number of globular clusters: while our Milky Way contains under 200, M87 has about 12,000, which some scientists theorise it collected from its smaller neighbours. Just as with all other large galaxies, M87 has a supermassive black hole at its centre. The mass of the black hole at the centre of a galaxy is related to the mass of the galaxy overall, so it shouldn’t be surprising that M87’s black hole is one of the most massive known. The black hole also may explain one of the galaxy’s most energetic features: a relativistic jet of matter being ejected at nearly the speed of light. The black hole was the object of paradigm-shifting observations by the Event Horizon Telescope. The EHT chose the object as the target of its observations for two reasons. While the EHT’s resolution is incredible, even it has its limits. As more massive black holes are also larger in diameter, M87's central black hole presented an unusually large target—meaning that it could be imaged more easily than smaller black holes closer by. The other reason for choosing it, however, was decidedly more Earthly. M87 appears fairly close to the celestial equator when viewed from our planet, making it visible in most of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This maximised the number of telescopes in the EHT that could observe it, increasing the resolution of the final image. This image was captured by FORS2 on ESO’s Very Large Telescope as part of the Cosmic Gems programme, an outreach initiative that uses ESO telescopes to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects for the purposes of education and public outreach. The programme makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations, and  produces breathtaking images of some of the most striking objects in the night sky. In case the data collected could be useful for future scientific purposes, these observations are saved and made available to astronomers through the ESO Science Archive.
  • Slide 11 of 146: Mars may have a reputation for being a desolate world, but it is certainly not dead: its albeit thin atmosphere is still capable of whipping up a storm and, as this image reveals, send hundreds – maybe even thousands – of ‘dust devils’ scurrying across the surface. These swirling columns of wind scour away the top layer of surface material and transport it elsewhere. Their course is plotted by the streaks they leave behind – the newly exposed surface material, which is coloured in blue/grey in this recent image from the CaSSIS camera onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Dust devils on Mars form in the same way as those on Earth: when the ground gets hotter than the air above it, rising plumes of hot air move through cooler denser air, creating an updraft, with the cooler air sinking and setting up a vertical circulation. If a horizontal gust of wind blows through, the dust devil is triggered. Once whirling fast enough, the spinning funnels can pick up dust and push it around the surface. As seen in this image, not much can stand in the way of a dust devil: they sweep up the sides of mounds, and down across the floors of impact craters alike. The image was taken on 4 January 2019, and shows a region northeast of Copernicus Crater, in the Cimmeria region of Mars. It captures an area measuring 7.2 x 31 km. North is towards the top left corner in this view. The image has been geometrically rectified and resampled to 4 m/pixel.
  • Slide 12 of 146: High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), together with its international partners, is operating the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe. This light has wavelengths of around a millimetre, between infrared light and radio waves, and is therefore known as millimetre and submillimetre radiation. ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas, spread over distances of up to 16 kilometres, and is the largest ground-based astronomical project in existence. This panorama shows ALMA antennas underneath the arching Milky Way. ALMA plays a key role in the Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-scale array of eight ground-based telescopes designed to capture images of a black hole.
  • Slide 13 of 146: In December 2018, an astronaut on the International Space Station took this highly oblique photograph of snow on the eastern Tien Shan and Taklimakan Desert in Central Asia. The Tien Shan (or Tian Shan) is one of the longest continuous mountain ranges in the world, stretching across 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) in northwest China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Tien Shan Mountains, sometimes called Central Asia’s Water Tower, provide essential fresh water to the area. Since the Taklimakan Desert is a low-lying basin enclosed by mountain ranges on three sides, a rain shadow keeps the region extremely dry for most of the year.
  • Slide 14 of 146: Explanation: The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just below center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead's pasture, an amateur astronomer used a backyard telescope in Austria to accumulate and artistically combine 7.5 hours of images in the light of Hydrogen (red), Oxygen (green), and Sulfur (blue). The resulting spectacular picture details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The Flame Nebula is visible just to the left of the Horsehead, while the bright star on the upper left is Alnilam, the central star in Orion's Belt. The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion.
  • Slide 15 of 146: The asteroid 6478 Gault is seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars. The Gault asteroid is located 214 million miles from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
  • Slide 16 of 146: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped this image as the station flew 265 miles above this cloudy formation in the south Indian Ocean. (NASA)
  • Slide 17 of 146: This star-studded image shows us a portion of Messier 11, an open star cluster in the southern constellation of Scutum (The Shield). Messier 11 is also known as the Wild Duck Cluster, as its brightest stars form a “V” shape that somewhat resembles a flock of ducks in flight. Messier 11 is one of the richest and most compact open clusters currently known. By investigating the brightest, hottest main sequence stars in the cluster astronomers estimate that it formed roughly 220 million years ago. Open clusters tend to contain fewer and younger stars than their more compact globular cousins, and Messier 11 is no exception: at its centre lie many blue stars, the hottest and youngest of the cluster’s few thousand stellar residents. The lifespans of open clusters are also relatively short compared to those of globular ones; stars in open clusters are spread further apart and are thus not as strongly bound to each other by gravity, causing them to be more easily and quickly drawn away by stronger gravitational forces. As a result Messier 11 is likely to disperse in a few million years as its members are ejected one by one, pulled away by other celestial objects in the vicinity.
  • Slide 18 of 146: Astronaut Nick Hague performs a spacewalk on March 29, 2019.
  • Slide 19 of 146: Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this image shows the narrow strait that connects eastern Europe to western Asia: the Bosphorus in northwest Turkey. The image contains satellite data stitched together from three radar scans acquired on 2 June, 8 July and 13 August 2018. Separating the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, the strait is one of the busiest maritime passages in the world, with around 48 000 ships passing through every year. Daily traffic includes international commercial shipping vessels and oil tankers, as well as local fishing and ferries. Ships in the strait can be seen in the image as multi-coloured dots. Three bridges are also visible spanning the strait and connecting the two continents. The two identical Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites carry radar instruments, which can see through clouds and rain, and in the dark, to image Earth’s surface below. The multi-temporal remote sensing technique combines two or more radar images over the same area to detect changes occurring between acquisitions. In the far-left of this image, the aqua-green patches of land show the changes in the fields between the three satellite acquisitions. Turkey’s most populous city, Istanbul, can be seen on both sides of the Bosphorus. The city appears in shades of white owing to the stronger reflection of the radar signal from buildings, which contrasts with the dark black colour of the inland lakes and surrounding waters.
  • Slide 20 of 146: ESA’s mission operations infrastructure, funded by all Member States as part of the Agency’s Basic Activities, comprises world-class technology assets that allow ESA to operate its fleet of spacecraft anywhere in that European scientists need to go. Included in the infrastructure is a planet-spanning network of tracking stations, dubbed ESTRACK. The essential task of all our stations is to communicate with spacecraft, transmitting commands and receiving scientific data and spacecraft status information. This network operates 24 hours per day, year round, and comprises a series of smaller-sized stations to link frequently orbiting Earth missions with ground controllers as well as the ‘big iron’ – three start-of-the-art 35 m-diameter dish antennas that allow ESA to locate and keep in touch with spacecraft that are hundreds of millions of kilometers away from Earth. These three are located in Australia, Spain and Argentina, providing 360-degree coverage for missions going virtually anywhere. Our technically advanced stations can track spacecraft circling Earth, watching the Sun, orbiting at the scientifically crucial Sun-Earth Lagrange points or voyaging deep into our Solar System. All stations are operated centrally from ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, using a sophisticated remote control and automation system to reduce personnel costs and boost efficiency. ESA experts ensure that the stations are operated, maintained and upgraded with the latest technology – and that they comply with international data standards (which ESA helps define). This means our stations can support missions from NASA, JAXA and other agencies, and vice versa, reducing cost and risk for all.
  • Slide 21 of 146: What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named W40, the butterfly is a nebula - a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form. The butterfly's two "wings" are giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region. The material that forms W40's wings was ejected from a dense cluster of stars that lies between the wings in the image. The hottest, most massive of these stars, W40 IRS 1a, lies near the center of the star cluster. W40 is about 1,400 light-years from the Sun, about the same distance as the well-known Orion nebula, although the two are almost 180 degrees apart in the sky. They are two of the nearest regions in which massive stars - with masses upwards of 10 times that of the Sun - have been observed to be forming.
  • Slide 22 of 146: The GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has made the first direct observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. This method revealed a complex exoplanetary atmosphere with clouds of iron and silicates swirling in a planet-wide storm. The technique presents unique possibilities for characterising many of the exoplanets known today. This artist’s impression shows the observed exoplanet, which goes by the name HR8799e.
  • Slide 23 of 146: This wide-field image shows the surroundings of the young star HR8799 in the constellation of Pegasus. This picture was created from material forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The location of HR 8799 is shown.
  • Slide 24 of 146: It is thought that well over a million people have been affected by what is probably the worst storm on record to hit the southern hemisphere. Making landfall on 15 March 2019, Cyclone Idai ripped through Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, razing buildings to the ground, destroying roads and inundating entire towns, villages and swathes of farmland. The human death toll is still unknown. While humanitarian efforts continue, people are now also facing the mammoth task of picking up the pieces and cleaning up after this devastating storm. This Copernicus Sentinel-1 image indicates where the flood waters are finally beginning to recede west of the port city of Beira in Mozambique. The image merges three separate satellite radar images from before the storm on 13 March, from one of the days when the floods were at their worst on 19 March, and as the waters are beginning to drain away on 25 March. The blue-purple colour indicates where floodwater is receding, while areas shown in red are still underwater. Images from Copernicus Sentinel-1 contributed to activations triggered in the Copernicus Emergency Management Service and the International Charter Space and Major Disasters. Both services take advantage of observations from several satellites and provide on-demand mapping to help civil protection authorities and the international humanitarian community in the face of major emergencies. Copernicus Sentinel-1 is a two-satellite mission, each carrying a radar instrument that can ‘see’ through clouds and rain, which makes it particularly useful for monitoring floods. As a constellation of two satellites orbiting 180° apart, the mission can repeat observations every six days, which is also useful for monitoring evolving situations.
  • Slide 25 of 146: This artist's concept shows a view from above the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, a six-unit CubeSat designed to search for ice on the Moon's surface using special lasers. The spacecraft uses its near-infrared lasers to shine light into shaded polar regions on the Moon, while an on-board reflectometer measures surface reflection and composition.
  • Slide 26 of 146: This set of stereoscopic images provides a 3D view of the large, 170-foot (52-meter) boulder that juts from asteroid Bennu’s southern hemisphere and the rocky slopes that surround it. The stereo pair was created by stereo image processing scientists Dr. Brian May, who is also the lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, and Claudia Manzoni. In January, May and Manzoni formally joined NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission science team as collaborators to create stereoscopic data products, which will be used by the team while selecting a sample collection site on B
  • Slide 27 of 146: NASA astronaut Nick Hague completed the first spacewalk of his career on Friday, March 22, 2019. He and fellow astronaut Anne McClain worked on a set of battery upgrades for six hours and 39 minutes, on the International Space Station’s starboard truss.
  • Slide 28 of 146: This fuzzy orb of light is a giant elliptical galaxy filled with an incredible 200 billion stars. Unlike spiral galaxies, which have a well-defined structure and boast picturesque spiral arms, elliptical galaxies appear fairly smooth and featureless. This is likely why this galaxy, named Messier 49, was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. At a distance of 56 million light-years, and measuring 157 000 light-years across, M49 was the first member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies to be discovered, and it is more luminous than any other galaxy at its distance or nearer. Elliptical galaxies tend to contain a larger portion of older stars than spiral galaxies and also lack young blue stars. Messier 49 itself is very yellow, which indicates that the stars within it are mostly older and redder than the Sun. In fact, the last major episode of star formation was about six billion years ago — before the Sun was even born! Messier 49 is also rich in globular clusters; it hosts about 6000, a number that dwarfs the 150 found in and around the Milky Way. On average, these clusters are 10 billion years old. Messier 49 is also known to host a supermassive black hole at its centre with the mass of more than 500 million Suns, identifiable by the X-rays pouring out from the heart of the galaxy (as this Hubble image comprises infrared observations, these X-rays are not visible here).
  • Slide 29 of 146: One of the four unit telescopes at the VLT under a clear night at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Each of the unit telescopes has a main mirror 8.2 metres in diameter, making them some of the largest single-mirror telescopes in the world. They can be used individually or together and, when combined, are equivalent to a single-mirror telescope of 16 metres, effectively the largest optical telescope in the world. Leading to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day, the VLT is helping astronomers to answer some of the biggest questions about our Universe.
  • Slide 30 of 146: This striking view of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and turbulent southern hemisphere was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed a close pass of the gas giant planet.
  • Slide 31 of 146: Last Wednesday, all locations on our planet enjoyed roughly the same number of hours of day and night. This event, called an equinox, takes place twice a year – around 20 March and then again around 23 September. On these two occasions along Earth’s yearly orbit around the Sun, sunlight shines directly overhead at the equator. The March equinox marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and of autumn in the southern one, and vice versa for the September equinox. The ESA/NASA SOHO solar observatory enjoys an alternative view of our parent star, staring at the Sun since 1995 from a vantage position – orbiting the first Lagrange point (L1) some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth towards the Sun. Over the years, SOHO has been monitoring the surface and stormy atmosphere of our star, as well as keeping an eye on the solar wind, the flow of charged particles streaming out through the Solar System, enabling a wealth of scientific discoveries. This montage of images shows SOHO’s view of the Sun at different ultraviolet wavelengths in the early morning of 20 March; the equinox occurred at 21:58 GMT. From left to right, the images shown in this view were taken at increasing wavelengths (171 Å, 195 Å, 284 Å and 304 Å, respectively) with SOHO’s Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, which currently takes snapshots of the Sun twice a day. Each wavelength channel is sensitive to solar material at a different range of temperatures, peering at different heights into the Sun’s atmosphere. From left to right, the brightest material in each image corresponds to temperatures of 1 million, 1.5 million, 2 million and 60 000–80 000ºC, respectively. Similar SOHO views of the Sun were also featured in a previous Space Science Image of the Week in 2017. Look at them side by side to spot any differences between the Sun then and now. For more information about SOHO, including realtime images of the Sun, visit: https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov Meanwhile, at the IABG facilities in Ottobrunn, Germany, the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is undergoing final testing ahead of launch early next year. This new joint ESA/NASA mission will perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun from a unique orbit that will allow scientists to study our star and its corona in much more detail than previously possible, as well as providing high-resolution images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun.
  • Slide 32 of 146: This astonishing image clearly illustrates why astronomical observatories are usually built in remote, and often inhospitable, places. At ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, the sky is so clear and untroubled by man-made sources of light that it appears as if a brightly-coloured celestial firework display is in progress! This photograph, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek, has been digitally projected to show as much of the sky as possible. This is why the roads leading to ESO’s 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (left) and 3.6-metre telescope (right) appear distorted, and the bright river of light that is the Milky Way seems to curve across the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon. Cosmic fireworks aside, this scene is filled with awe-inspiring phenomena. The pink “fireworks” themselves are actually large accumulations of glowing gas known as nebulae. To the right of the Milky Way lie the Magellanic Clouds, two nearby dwarf galaxies. Rising up from the horizon on the left of the image is a pale, white-ish column of light. This is the glow of Zodiacal light, caused by sunlight scattering off dust particles in the Solar System. At the centre of the image is another glowing region — green this time. This is airglow, a phenomenon that occurs high up in the Earth’s atmosphere, where a variety of processes create ghostly coloured light.
  • Slide 33 of 146: On 21 March 2019, Vega flight VV14 lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to deliver the Italian Space Agency's Earth observation satellite Prisma, into orbit.
  • Slide 34 of 146: A static hot-fire test of the Orion spacecraft's Launch Abort System Attitude Control Motor to help qualify the motor for human spaceflight, to help ensure Orion is ready from liftoff to splashdown for missions to the Moon.
  • Slide 35 of 146: ESA astronaut Samanth Cristoforetti with water on the International Space Station during her Futura mission.
  • Slide 36 of 146: A waxing gibbous Moon is seen above Earth's limb as the International Space Station was orbiting 266 miles above the South Atlantic Ocean.
  • Slide 37 of 146: t’s impossible to miss the star in this ESO Picture of the Week — beaming proudly from the centre of the frame is the massive multiple star system Tau Canis Majoris, the brightest member of the Tau Canis Majoris Cluster (NGC 2362) in the eponymous constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Tau Canis Majoris aside, the cluster is populated by many young and less attention-seeking stars that are only four or five million years old, all just beginning their cosmic lifetimes.
  • Slide 38 of 146: Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, this image shows Cyclone Idai on 13 March 2019 west of Madagascar and heading for Mozambique. Here, the width of the storm is around 800–1000 km, but does not include the whole extent of Idai.
  • Slide 39 of 146: Technicians working Mars 2020's System's Test 1 approach their workstation in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Over two weeks in January 2019, 72 engineers and technicians assigned to the 2020 mission took over the High Bay 1 cleanroom in JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility to put the software and electrical systems aboard the mission's cruise, entry capsule, descent stage and rover through their paces.
  • Slide 40 of 146: The Bering Strait is a sea passage that separates Russia and Alaska. It is usually covered with sea ice at this time of year – but as this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on 7 March 2019 shows, it is virtually ice-free.
  • Slide 41 of 146: This chart shows the location of the reflection nebula NGC 1788 in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). The map includes most of the stars visible to the unaided eye under good conditions, and the region of sky shown in this image is indicated.
  • Slide 42 of 146: Saturn is famous for its bright, glorious rings but in this picture, taken during Saturn's 2009 equinox, the rings are cast in a different light as sunlight hits the rings edge-on.
  • Slide 43 of 146: Captured just yesterday, 19 March, at 17:11 GMT (18:11 CET) by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this image shows the oil spill from the Grande America vessel. The Italian container ship, carrying 2200 tonnes of heavy fuel, caught fire and sank in the Atlantic, about 300 km off the French coast on 12 March.
  • Slide 44 of 146: A test version of the 10.5-m long magnetometer boom built for ESA’s mission to Jupiter, developed by SENER in Spain, seen being tested at ESA’s Test Centre in the Netherlands, its weight borne by balloons.
  • Slide 45 of 146: This long image is entirely over the extensive central peak complex of Hale Crater. Of particular interest are bedrock outcrops and associated fine-grained sediments with different colors. This 153-kilometer diameter crater was named after American astronomer George Ellery Hale.
  • Slide 46 of 146: Most gullies in the southern mid-latitudes are on south-facing slopes, which are the coldest and have the most frost in the winter. However, some occur on other slopes. This image shows large gullies on both the pole- and equator-facing slopes. An important puzzle in Mars science is whether or not all of these gullies form in the same geologic eras and by the same processes.
  • Slide 47 of 146: With the backshell that will help protect the Mars 2020 rover during its descent into the Martian atmosphere visible in the foreground, a technician on the project monitors the progress of Systems Test 1. Over two weeks in January 2019, 72 engineers and technicians assigned to the 2020 mission took over the High Bay 1 cleanroom in JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility to put the software and electrical systems aboard the mission's cruise, entry capsule, descent stage and rover through their paces.
  • Slide 48 of 146: The Atlantic Ocean Road is an 8.3 kilometer road that runs through an archipelago in Eide and Averoy in More of Romsdal, Norway. It consists of eight bridges and four resting places and viewpoints. The road was originally proposed as a railway line, but that was abandoned. The road was opened in July 1989, and has been declared the world's best road trip. The image was acquired July 2, 2008, covers an area of 8.9 by 11.8 kilometers, and is located at 63 degrees north, 7.3 degrees east.
  • Slide 49 of 146: The south polar layered deposits are icy layers that have been deposited over millions of years, preserving a climate history of Mars. In this image the layers are well illuminated to accentuate the topography.
  • Slide 50 of 146: The southern edge of Jupiter's north polar region is captured in this view from NASA's Juno spacecraft. The scene prominently displays a long, brown oval known as a "brown barge" located within a polar jet stream, called "Jet N4."
  • Slide 51 of 146: On Mar. 6, 2019, SDO observed a long lunar transit - with a twist. The shadow of the Moon in SDO's images first touched the limb of the Sun at 2200 UTC (5pm EST) on Mar. 6, making its way across and finally left the solar disk at 0209 UTC on Mar. 7 (9:09 pm EST, Mar. 6). The moon's apparent reversal is caused by SDO first overtaking the moon in its orbit, then the moon catching up as SDO swings around Earth's dusk side. During the transit the Sun moves in the frame as the telescopes cool and flex in the lunar shadow. Note that the edge of the Moon is very sharp because it has no atmosphere.
  • Slide 52 of 146: The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over New Zealand, with the image centred over Cook Strait between the North and South Islands.
  • Slide 53 of 146: The Soyuz rocket is transported by train to the launch pad, Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
  • Slide 54 of 146: NASA's InSight lander took this series of images on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, capturing the moment when Phobos, one of Mars' moons, crossed in front of the Sun and darkened the ground around the lander. These images were taken by InSight's Instrument Context Camera (ICC), located under the lander's deck.
  • Slide 55 of 146: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was photographed inside the Super Guppy aircraft on Monday, March 11, 2019, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Super guppy will carry the flight frame with the Orion crew module and service module inside to a testing facility in Sandusky, Ohio, for full thermal vacuum testing.
  • Slide 56 of 146: This 360-degree panorama is composed of 354 images taken by the Opportunity rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018, or sols (Martian days) 5,084 through 5,111. This is the last panorama Opportunity acquired before the solar-powered rover succumbed to a global Martian dust storm on the same June 10. This version of the scene is presented in approximate true color.
  • Slide 57 of 146: The copper-coloured baffle cover of our Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, in the clean room at Airbus Defence and Space Spain, Madrid. After completing spacecraft testing, the satellite has passed a very important review that determined it is ready to fly. Cheops will be stored in Madrid for a few months before being shipped to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana; launch is scheduled in the time slot between 15 October and 14 November 2019.
  • Slide 58 of 146: Before Rosalind Franklin the ExoMars rover can search for signs of life on Mars, it must learn how to manoeuvre the landscape. Scientists and engineers are putting the rover through a series of locomotion tests to fine tune how it will respond to a challenging martian terrain.
  • Slide 59 of 146: A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for Demo-1, the first uncrewed mission of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Liftoff was at 2:49 a.m. EST, March 2, 2019. The SpaceX Crew Dragon’s trip to the International Space Station is designed to validate end-to-end systems and capabilities, leading to certification to fly crew. NASA has worked with SpaceX and Boeing in developing the Commercial Crew Program spacecraft to facilitate new human spaceflight systems launching from U.S. soil with the goal of safe, reliable and cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit destinations, such as the space station.
  • Slide 60 of 146: Humankind's most distant outpost was recently captured crossing the face of our enormous and gleaming Sun. The fleeting transit of the International Space Station was over in the blink of an eye, but Ian Griffin, Director at the Otago Museum of New Zealand, made sure he was in the right place to capture it. “A transit was predicted about 130 km from my home in Dunedin on New Zealand's South Island. So, I packed my telescope into my car and drove for approximately 2 hours”, explains Ian. “On Thursday 31 January, at 11:07 NZDT, the International Space Station crossed the Sun in less time than a human heart beats once, and I was there to witness it”. The Space Station, slightly larger in size than a football field, orbits Earth every 92 minutes. It is one of the most remarkable endeavours our species has ever embarked upon, yet it pales in comparison to the size and power of our star. This remarkable spectacle serves as a much needed reminder that the people and technology we send into space can be affected by solar activity, and the changing environment . One of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, the Carrington event of 1859, was caused as a fast coronal mass ejection associated with an enormous solar flare struck Earth’s magnetosphere. The impact created auroras as far north as Queensland, Australia, and as far south as the Caribbean. Telegraph systems across Europe and North America failed, with reports of some operators receiving electric shocks and telegraph pylons sending out sparks. Today, a storm of this magnitude would create far greater disruption, as we become ever-more dependent on infrastructure in space and on Earth that is vulnerable to the outbursts of the Sun. As part of ESA’s Space Safety & Security activities, the Space Weather Office is working to minimise the potential damage and disruption these events can cause. The future Lagrange mission will keep a constant eye on the Sun, sending timely warnings via the Space Weather Service Network to operators and controllers of vital infrastructure, giving them time to take protective measures. This early warning system will also be of great importance to astronauts and future explorers to the Moon and Mars, who, vulnerable to the radiation emitted during these extreme events will need time to get to safety. Find out more: Lagrange mission Space Weather Service Network Space Weather Space Safety & Security #AuroraHunters From 3-5 March, ESA and the Norwegian Space Agency are coming together for the #AuroraHunters SocialSpace, live from Tromso, Norway. Together with a group of 30 attendees, selected from hundreds of applicants across the globe, we will be highlighting the affects of the Sun on our infrastructure, technologies and skies – in the form of the awesome Aurora. Keep an eye on @esaoperations and follow the hastag #AuroraHunters on twitter to keep up with the event.
  • Slide 61 of 146: This clear-weather simulation shows how the eclipsed Sun could look like in the sky above La Silla on 2 July 2019 if there are no clouds (more information). An annotated version of this image is available here.
  • Slide 62 of 146: If you had a brand new state-of-the-art telescope facility, what would you look at first? Researchers at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory — which comprises four small telescopes, each with a 1-metre primary mirror — chose to view the Lagoon Nebula. This magnificent picture is the result, and is one of the SPECULOOS’ first ever observations. The nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in our galaxy where new stars are being born, and is found roughly 5000 light-years from us.
  • Slide 63 of 146: Two days remain until the planned liftoff of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket—the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans. Liftoff is targeted for 2:49 a.m. EST on Saturday, March 2, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Demo-1 mission to the International Space Station serves as an end-to-end test of the system’s capabilities. This photo of Crew Dragon was shared by SpaceX on Feb. 6, 2019.
  • Slide 64 of 146: A composite image of the Cigar Galaxy (also called M82), a starburst galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The magnetic field detected by the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus instrument (known as HAWC+) on SOFIA (the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), shown as streamlines, appears to follow the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst.
  • Slide 65 of 146: McClain had an unparalleled view from orbit of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station on Sunday, March 3, 2019. The Crew Dragon docked autonomously to the orbiting laboratory, a historic first for a commercially built and operated American crew spacecraft. This uncrewed test flight is providing valuable information to help verify that Crew Dragon will provide astronauts a safe, comfortable and enjoyable ride to space.
  • Slide 66 of 146: This image was taken of the hills that resulted from uplifted rocks due to an impact that formed the 230-kilometer diameter Galle Crater.
  • Slide 67 of 146: For the first time in a long time the Sun has gone an entire month without any sunspots (Feb. 1-18, 2019). To put this in context, for five years (2011-2015) surrounding the latest solar maximum in March 2014 - the period when the Sun's magnetic activity is the most intense - there were only three days without any sunspots[MH1].
  • Slide 68 of 146: Many people hope to catch a glimpse of these reddish-green swirls of colour floating in the polar skies. Few are as lucky as ESA astronaut Tim Peake, who captured this dazzling display of the aurora Australis from the International Space Station during his mission in 2016. This stunning display of light splashed across the sky is a product of severe solar wind lashing against Earth’s protective magnetic shield.
  • Slide 69 of 146: Mawrth Vallis is a place on Mars that has fascinated scientists because of the clays and other hydrated minerals detected from orbit.
  • Slide 70 of 146: This photograph, taken a short hike from the Geographic South Pole in Antarctica, shows some of the antennas comprising the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) array. They are visible here as the chain of antennas and wiring stretching away into the distance. The red lights along the horizon in the background are lights marking the entrances to the Amundsen-Scott research station, which lies a good kilometre distant.
  • Slide 71 of 146: You are staring at one of the unsolved mysteries on Mars. This surface texture of interconnected ridges and troughs, referred to as "brain terrain" is found throughout the mid-latitude regions of Mars. (This image is in Protonilus Mensae.)
  • Slide 72 of 146: The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over the high, snow-studded Alps under clear skies. The Alps extend 1200 km through eight different countries: France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. This mountain range, which is inhabited by some 20 million people, covers an area of approximately 200 000 sq km. Captured on 16 February 2019, this true-colour image shows little clouds, particularly over the Alps and the surrounding flatter lands in southern France. There is an interesting contrast between this and the haze hanging over the Po valley in Italy, directly south of the Alps. The haze is most likely to be a mix of both fog and smog, trapped at the base of the Alps owing to both its topography and atmospheric conditions. Patches of snow are also visible on the island of Corsica, to the left of mainland Italy, Croatia, to the right, and at the bottom of the Apennines in central Italy. Most of Italy’s rivers find their source in the Apennines, including the Tiber and the Arno. The Adriatic Sea to the east of Italy is visible in turquoise, particularly the coastal area surrounding the Gargano National Park, jutting out. This light-green colour of the sea along the coast is likely to be caused by sediment carried into the sea by river discharge. Directly to the right of the Alps, the image shows a pale-green Lake Neusiedl straddling the Austrian-Hungarian border. Neusiedl, meaning ‘swamp’ in Hungarian, is the largest endorheic lake in central Europe, meaning water flows into but not out of the lake, hence its size and level frequently fluctuates. It is a popular area for windsurfing, sailing and spotting the woolly Mangalica pig. To the right, the freshwater Lake Balaton is visible, and is the largest lake in central Europe. It stretches for over 75 km in the southern foothills of Hungary. Its striking emerald-green colour is probably down to the presence of algae that grow in the shallow waters. Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The mission provides critical information for a range of applications from marine observations to large-area vegetation monitoring. The satellite’s instrument package includes an optical sensor to monitor changes in the colour of Earth’s surfaces. This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
  • Slide 73 of 146: These three images show merging galaxies observed for the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey, or GOALS. The merger on the left is Arp 302; in the middle are NGC 7752 and 7753; on the right is IIZw96. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
  • Slide 74 of 146: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard launches from Launch Complex 39A, Saturday, March 2, 2019, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its way to the International Space Station. The Demo-1 mission launched at 2:49 a.m. ET and was the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The mission will serve as an end-to-end test of the system's capabilities.
  • Slide 75 of 146: Dramatic atmospheric features in Jupiter's northern hemisphere are captured in this view from NASA's Juno spacecraft. The new perspective shows swirling clouds that surround a circular feature within a jet stream region called "Jet N6." This color-enhanced image was taken at 9:20 a.m. PST (12:20 p.m. EST) on Feb. 12, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 18th close flyby of the gas giant planet. At the time, Juno was about 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a latitude of approximately 55 degrees north. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. The image has been rotated approximately 100 degrees to the right.
  • Slide 76 of 146: An image taken from the International Space Station shows orange swaths of airglow hovering in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s new Atmospheric Waves Experiment will observe this airglow from a perch on the space station to help scientists understand, and ultimately improve forecasts of, space weather changes in the upper atmosphere.
  • Slide 77 of 146: NASA astronaut Alvin Drew participated in the STS-133 mission's first spacewalk as construction and maintenance continued on the International Space Station in 2011. During the six-hour, 34-minute spacewalk, Drew and fellow astronaut Steve Bowen (out of frame) installed the J612 power extension cable, move a failed ammonia pump module to the External Stowage Platform 2 on the Quest Airlock for return to Earth at a later date, installed a camera wedge on the right hand truss segment, installed extensions to the mobile transporter rail and exposed the Japanese "Message in a Bottle" experiment to space.
  • Slide 78 of 146: Three of the four unit telescopes that make up ESO's VLT reflect the glow of the laser light being sent up by the fourth. From left to right, the unit telescopes are Antu, Kueyen and Melipal, all meaningful names in the Mapuche language. The laser guide star being generated by the fourth unit telescope (Yepun) is part of the Adaptive Optics system, state-of-the-art technology that corrects the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere to produce high quality observational data. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, can be seen as a bright band across the sky.
  • Slide 79 of 146: This Picture of the Week is a special treat: a first-light image from the newest resident of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory. This planet-hunting machine aims to observe nearby but dim stars to locate exoplanets for other telescopes — such as ESO’s forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) — to study in detail. Comprising four one-metre telescopes, each named after one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons,  SPECULOOS promises to open up new frontiers in exoplanet research. This image, however, is obviously not of a faint star, but of a galaxy called NGC 6902. Before a telescope starts its primary mission it must successfully undertake an event called “first light”: the first time it is used for a scientific observation. Astronomers typically pick well-known objects for this initial test of a telescope’s capabilities, which is half demonstration and half celebration. In this case, the team settled on NGC 6902 as the first-light target for the Ganymede telescope. The result was this stunning image of the spiral galaxy, which is found about 120 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The galaxy’s spiral arms swirl outwards from a bright centre until they dissolve into streams of blue haze at the galaxy’s edge. If this is what Ganymede can produce as its first observation of something it wasn’t even designed to image, we have a lot to look forward to. Watch this space!
  • Slide 80 of 146: This swirling palette of colours portrays the life cycle of stars in a spiral galaxy known as NGC 300. Located some six million light-years away, NGC 300 is relatively nearby. It is one of the closest galaxies beyond the Local Group – the hub of galaxies to which our own Milky Way galaxy belongs. Due to its proximity, it is a favourite target for astronomers to study stellar processes in spiral galaxies. The population of stars in their prime is shown in this image in green hues, based on optical observations performed with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile. Red colours indicate the glow of cosmic dust in the interstellar medium that pervades the galaxy: this information derives from infrared observations made with NASA’s Spitzer space telescope, and can be used to trace stellar nurseries and future stellar generations across NGC 300. A complementary perspective on this galaxy’s composition comes from data collected in X-rays by ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory, shown in blue. These represent the end points of the stellar life cycle, including massive stars on the verge of blasting out as supernovas, remnants of supernova explosions, neutron stars, and black holes. Many of these X-ray sources are located in NGC 300, while others – especially towards the edges of the image – are foreground objects in our own Galaxy, or background galaxies even farther away. The sizeable blue blob immediately to the left of the galaxy’s centre is especially interesting, featuring two intriguing sources that are part of NGC 300 and shine brightly in X-rays. One of them, known as NGC 300 X-1, is in fact a binary system, consisting of a Wolf-Rayet star – an ageing hot, massive and luminous type star that drives strong winds into its surroundings – and a black hole, the compact remains of what was once another massive, hot star. As matter from the star flows towards the black hole, it is heated up to temperatures of millions of degrees or more, causing it to shine in X-rays. The other source, dubbed NGC 300 ULX1, was originally identified as a supernova explosion in 2010. However, later observations prompted astronomers to reconsider this interpretation, indicating that this source also conceals a binary system comprising a very massive star and a compact object – a neutron star or a black hole – feeding on material from its stellar companion. Data obtained in 2016 with ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR observatories revealed regular variations in the X-ray signal of NGC 300 ULX1, suggesting that the compact object in this binary system is a highly magnetized, rapidly spinning neutron star, or pulsar. The large blue blob in the upper left corner is a much more distant object: a cluster of galaxies more than one billion light years away, whose X-ray glow is caused by the hot diffuse gas interspersed between the galaxies.
  • Slide 81 of 146: Tropical Cyclone Oma is pictured as the International Space Station orbited 256 miles above the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
  • Slide 82 of 146: This picture showcases a gravitational lensing system called SDSS J0928+2031. Quite a few images of this type of lensing have been featured as Pictures of the Week in past months, as NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope data is currently being used to research how stars form and evolve in distant galaxies. Gravitational lensing can help astronomers study objects that would otherwise be too faint or appear too small for us to view. When a massive object — such as a massive cluster of galaxies, as seen here — distorts space with its immense gravitational field, it causes light from more distant galaxies to travel along altered and warped paths. It also amplifies the light, making it possible for us to observe and study its source. In this image, we see two dominant elliptical galaxies near the centre of the image. The gravity from the galaxy cluster that is the home of these galaxies is acting as the aforementioned gravitational lens, allowing us to view the more distant  galaxies sitting behind them. We see the effects of this lensing as narrow, curved streaks of light surrounding both of the large galaxies. This image was observed by Hubble as part of the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey programme.
  • Slide 83 of 146: The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite captured this true-colour image on 5 February 2019, just three days after heavy rainfall in Rome and the surrounding area of Lazio, Italy. It shows sediment gushing into the Tyrrhenian Sea, part of the Mediterranean Sea. The downpour on 2 February led to flooded streets, the closing of the banks of the Tiber River and several roads. The Tiber River can be seen snaking its way southwards in the image. The third longest river in Italy, it rises in the Apennine Mountains and flows around 400 km before flowing through the city of Rome and draining into the sea near the town of Ostia. The Tiber River plays an important role in sediment transport, so coastal waters here are often discoloured. However, the recent rains resulted in a large amount of sediment pouring into the Tyrrhenian Sea, as this image shows. The sediment plume can be seen stretching 28 km from the coast, carried northwest by currents. Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution multispectral imager to monitor changes in vegetation. It also provides information on pollution in lakes and coastal waters.
  • Slide 84 of 146: Captured on 3 September 2018 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite, this image shows part of western Sicily in Italy and two of the main Aegadian Islands: Favignana and Levanzo. This false-colour image included the near-infrared channel and was processed in a way, that makes vegetation appear in bright red. The bright turquoise colours, near the port city of Trapani, at the top of the image, and the Isola Grande in the middle of the image, depict salt marshes. Both the Saline di Trapani e Paceco Nature Reserve and the Stagnone Nature Reserve with their shallow sea waters, windy coast and abundant sunshine, make the area between Marsala, at the bottom of the image, and Trapani an ideal place for salt production. The reserve consists of more than 1000 hectares of landscape dotted with windmills, migratory birds such as flamingos and light-red lagoons visible in summer. This greenish-blue colour is heavily contrasted with the black of the open Mediterranean Sea. The islands, off the coast, are rich in history, both boasting Paleolithic and Neolithic cave paintings. The most famous being the Grotta del Genovese on the picturesque island of Levanzo, at the top left of the image. The cave was discovered only in 1949 and is estimated to be between 6000 and 10 000 years old. Below, the butterfly-shaped island of Favignana, known for its tuna fisheries and a type of limestone known as tufa rock, is the largest of the Aegadian islands. In 241 BC, one of the Punic Wars’ naval battles was fought at the Cala Rossa (Red Cove), named after the bloodshed. Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The mission is mostly used to track changes in the way land is being used and to monitor the health of our vegetation.
  • Slide 85 of 146: Einstein predicted that time slows down the faster you travel and the time-dilation hypothesis has since been proven by flying atomic clocks on aircraft. The three fastest human beings at the moment are NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques (pictured) and Roscosmos astronaut Oleg Kononenko who are orbiting Earth on the International Space Station at a speed of around 28 800 km/h. They are travelling so fast that they will return home to Earth after their six-month spaceflight 0.007 seconds younger than if they had stayed with their feet on the ground. But how do astronauts perceive time in space? Space Station crew report that time seems to speed up in microgravity so European researchers are trying to find out more by immersing astronauts in virtual reality and testing their reaction times. A virtual reality headset is used to block external visual cues that could influence the results. The experiment focuses on how astronauts estimate time duration as well as their reaction times. They are asked gauge how long a visual target appears on screen. Their reaction times to these prompts are recorded to process speed and attention. The astronauts run the experiment before flight, on the International Space Station and again when they land to compare results. ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst was the first test subject to take part in this experiment in 2018. Anne and David did a session in February in ESA’s Columbus laboratory. Understanding how time is perceived in space is important as astronauts are often required to conduct precision work where timing is everything. This research in microgravity will help reveal clues as to what helps keep our brains ticking the seconds accurately.
  • Slide 86 of 146: The most detailed images of Ultima Thule -- obtained just minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1 -- have a resolution of about 110 feet (33 meters) per pixel. Their combination of higher spatial resolution and a favorable viewing geometry offer an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the surface of Ultima Thule, believed to be the most primitive object ever encountered by a spacecraft. This processed, composite picture combines nine individual images taken with the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), each with an exposure time of 0.025 seconds, just 6 ½ minutes before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Ultima Thule (officially named 2014 MU69). The image was taken at 5:26 UT (12:26 a.m. EST) on Jan. 1, 2019, when the spacecraft was 4,109 miles (6,628 kilometers) from Ultima Thule and 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. The angle between the spacecraft, Ultima Thule and the Sun – known as the “phase angle” – was 33 degrees. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute, National Optical Astronomy Observatory
  • Slide 87 of 146: The construction of the launch complex for the next generation of the Ariane launcher series is well under way at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
  • Slide 88 of 146: ASA's Curiosity Mars took this image with its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Feb. 10, 2019 (Sol 2316). The rover is currently exploring a region of Mount Sharp nicknamed "Glen Torridon" that has lots of clay minerals. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.
  • Slide 89 of 146: Audience members learn about the night skies during a show at the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, a cutting-edge astronomy centre dedicated to making astronomy and ESO's work accessible to the public. The planetarium boasts a scientifically accurate three-dimensional astronomical database, ensuring a unique and authentic immersive experience.
  • Slide 90 of 146: Bright green sources of high-energy X-ray light captured by NASA's NuSTAR mission are overlaid on an optical-light image of the Whirlpool galaxy (the spiral in the center of the image) and its companion galaxy, M51b (the bright greenish-white spot above the Whirlpool), taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The bright green spots at the center of the Whirlpool and M51b are created by material surrounding supermassive black holes; additional X-ray sources in the vicinity contribute to the emission. The known ultraluminous neutron star is located on the left side of the Whirlpool.
  • Slide 91 of 146: The SDO spacecraft is in another eclipse season as of Feb. 6, 2019. This begins a several week period when the Earth briefly blocks SDO's view of the Sun each day. In fact, because SDO orbits above the Mountain Time zone, the Earth passes between SDO and the Sun at about 7:20 UT (12:20 am MT) each orbit. Eclipses are due to SDO's circular geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles above Earth. At the speed we are showing the frames, the eclipse is only a flicker. The still image shows that the edge of Earth, here about halfway across the Sun, looks quite rough due to the absorption of the 304 Å EUV light by our atmosphere.
  • Slide 92 of 146: This artist's concept shows NASA's InSight lander with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface. InSight's package of weather sensors, called the Auxiliary Payload Subsystem (APSS), includes an air pressure sensor inside the lander -- its inlet is visible on InSight's deck -- and two air temperature and wind sensors on the deck. Under the deck's edge is a magnetometer, provided by UCLA, to measure changes in the local magnetic field that could also influence SEIS. InSight's air temperature and wind sensors are actually refurbished spares built for Curiosity's Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS). Called Temperature and Wind for InSight, or TWINS, these two east- and west-facing booms sit on the lander's deck and were provided by Spain's Centro de Astrobiología (CAB).
  • Slide 93 of 146: Concordia station, located on a plateau 3200 m above sea level on the Antarctic peninsula, is first and foremost a research hub. Nestled at the very southern tip of Earth, where temperatures can drop to –80 °C in the winter, and a yearly average temperature of –50 °C, the station offers researchers the opportunity to collect data and experiment like no other place on Earth. Among these researchers is a team of micrometeorite hunters scouting the snow and ice for traces of extra-terrestrial material less than a millimetre in diameter. Every year the amount of micrometeorites accounts for up to 1000 tonnes of particles on Earth. Some of these fall in Antarctica where the frigid temperatures preserve these cosmic particles.
  • Slide 94 of 146: In December 2018, the comet 46P/Wirtanen passed within 11.6 million kilometres of the Earth — about 30 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. This close pass gave astronomers the chance to observe the comet in detail, and ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) took full advantage. ALMA’s speciality is observing the cooler components of the Universe, such as gas and dust, and the array often focuses on specific molecules. This image is no exception, as it highlights one key thing: the hydrogen cyanide gas in the coma around the comet’s nucleus. But why would scientists be looking for an infamous poison? Well, it turns out that hydrogen cyanide is as common as mystery novels have led us to believe — throughout the cosmos, at least! Because it’s a simple organic molecule that forms relatively easily, it’s been observed in comets, stellar atmospheres, and the clouds of dust and gas that exist between stars. This image builds on those observations by showing clearly the hydrogen cyanide emanating from the nucleus of this comet. Further ALMA observations showed that other, more complex organic molecules were present, too. This matters because, while it may be poisonous to many organisms on Earth today, hydrogen cyanide may have played an important role in getting life started on Earth. It’s very reactive, so it easily interacts with surrounding chemicals to create new molecules — including some of those essential for life, such as amino acids. One theory posits that hydrogen cyanide, brought here in part by comets, jump-started organic chemistry here on Earth, eventually leading to the beginning of life. ALMA’s imaging of 46P/Wirtanen further supports the idea that comets could have brought this life-giving material to the early Earth.
  • Slide 95 of 146: Today's VIS image shows a dune field on a crater floor in Terra Cimmeria. Dunes at high latitudes - near the polar caps - are affected by seasonal frost and ice. The interactions with frost/ice reduces the amount of movement of sand grains within the dunes. This changes the morphology of near polar dunes when compared to dunes at lower latitudes where ice/frost do not occur as frequently. This crater's latitude is 68 degrees south of the equator.
  • Slide 96 of 146: Copernicus Sentinel-2 brings you some of the jewels of the Maldives for Valentine’s week. Arguably one of the most romantic destinations in the world, the Maldives lie in the Indian Ocean about 700 km southwest of Sri Lanka. The nation is made up of more than 1000 coral islands spread across more than 20 ring-shaped atolls.
  • Slide 97 of 146: Set to fly in 2022, ESA’s Biomass Earth Explorer satellite with its 12-m diameter radar antenna will pierce through woodland canopies to perform a global survey of Earth’s forests – and see how they change over the course of Biomass’s five-year mission. Biomass will achieve this using a ‘synthetic aperture radar’ to send down signals from orbit and record the resulting backscatter, building up maps of tree height and volume. To see through leafy treetop to the trees themselves, Biomass will employ long-wavelength ‘P-band’ radar, which has never previously flown in space. It will have its signals amplified to travel down from a 600-km altitude orbit down to Earth and back.
  • Slide 98 of 146: Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, speaks during a mission briefing for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Feb. 13, in Pasadena, Calif.
  • Slide 99 of 146: “Valentine’s Day has struck again,” tweeted ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet when he posted this image of a heart-shaped lake in Mongolia. Thomas took this image from the International Space Station during his Proxima mission in 2017.
  • Slide 100 of 146: The geologic history of a planet is written in its layers. Erosion of the surface reveals several shades of light toned layers, likely sedimentary deposits, as shown in this image taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The most recent geologic features are the narrow sand dunes snaking across the top of all the rocks.
  • Slide 101 of 146: Audience members learn about the night skies during a show at the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre, a cutting-edge astronomy centre dedicated to making astronomy and ESO's work accessible to the public. The planetarium boasts a scientifically accurate three-dimensional astronomical database, ensuring a unique and authentic immersive experience.
  • Slide 102 of 146: Robert Curbeam currently holds the record for the most spacewalks during a single spaceflight. In this image from December 2006, Curbeam works on the port overhead solar array wing on the International Space Station's P6 truss during Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission. This was the mission's fourth spacewalk.
  • Slide 103 of 146: In this navigation camera raw image, NASA's Opportunity Rover looks back over its own tracks on Aug. 4, 2010.
  • Slide 104 of 146: NASA's InSight spacecraft and its recently deployed Wind and Thermal Shield were imaged on Mars on Feb. 4, 2019, by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
  • Slide 105 of 146: It is always reassuring to catch that first familiar glimpse of home after a great adventure, but for our space-faring satellites the return visit is brief and of a practical nature: to use the planet’s immense gravity to sling it onto a new trajectory.
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  • Slide 109 of 146: This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.
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  • Slide 111 of 146: A portion of the International Space Station's solar arrays caps this nighttime view of the Earth's limb with an aurora as the orbital complex orbited 258 miles above Ukraine and Russia.
  • Slide 112 of 146: NASA's InSight lander deployed its Wind and Thermal Shield on Feb. 2, 2019 (sol 66). The shield covers InSight's seismometer, which was set down onto the Martian surface on Dec. 19, 2018. This image was taken by the Instrument Deployment Camera on the lander's robotic arm.
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  • Slide 115 of 146: ALMAAntennas in the snow on a cold day in the Chilean winter. In front of the closest one someone has written a portentous phrase in the snow: "Winter is here."
  • Slide 116 of 146: A selfie taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Sol 2291 (January 15) at the "Rock Hall" drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge. This was Curiosity's 19th drill site. The drill hole is visible to the rover's lower-left; the entire scene is slightly dustier than usual due to a regional dust storm affecting the area. The selfie is composed of 57 individual images taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm. The images are then stitched together into a panorama. MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.
  • Slide 117 of 146: This image showcases a beautiful starfield projected on the dome of the planetarium at the heart of the ESO Supernova Planetarium & Visitor Centre. The state-of-the-art projection technology and scientifically accurate three-dimensional astronomical database create an authentic and immersive experience.
  • Slide 118 of 146: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Crew Dragon attached, rolls out of the company’s hangar at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Jan. 3, 2019. The rocket will undergo checkouts prior to the liftoff of Demo-1, the inaugural flight of one of the spacecraft designed to take NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. NASA has worked with SpaceX and Boeing in developing Commercial Crew Program spacecraft to facilitate new human spaceflight systems launching from U.S. soil with the goal of safe, reliable and cost-effective access to low-Earth orbit destinations such as the space station.
  • Slide 119 of 146: Portions of Cuba, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands are viewed from the International Space Station, as the orbital complex flew 252 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. At left is the aft end of the Progress 70 resupply ship from Russia attached to the station's Pirs docking compartment.
  • Slide 120 of 146: The Moon seen rising over the Goonhilly antenna, taken at 5:27 UTC (06:27 CET) on Monday, 21 January, during an eclipse of the Moon, which gave it a reddish tinge.
  • Slide 121 of 146: Unit Telescope 4 (Yepun) at the VLT sends a laser into the night sky over Paranal to create a guide star. This is part of the adaptive optics system, which is just some of the state-of-the-art technology available to astronomers at the VLT to study the Universe. The Milky Way can be seen as a bright band overhead, exmplifying the remarkable viewing conditions at Paranal, which has about 300 clear nights per year.
  • Slide 122 of 146: The sky glows a soft pink as the sun approaches the horizon at Cerro Paranal, a 2600-metre high mountain south of Antofagasta, Chile. This is the location of ESO's VLT, the world's most advanced optical instrument, which is well equipped to make the most of the 300 clear nights here. In the foreground to the left, the soft light falls on one of the VLT's four Auxiliary Telescopes, which are dedicated to interferometry and which help to sharpen the vision of the telescope.
  • Slide 123 of 146: A side view of ESA’s Solar Orbiter as it entered a vacuum chamber for thermal vacuum testing at the IABG test facility in Ottobrunn, Germany, last month. The spacecraft flight model had been readied by prime contractor Airbus in the UK. Due to launch in 2020, Solar Orbiter will observe the Sun and measure the solar wind from a minimum of 42 million km away, or less than one-third Earth’s distance. As a result, the spacecraft will be subjected to around 13 times the amount of solar heating that Earth-orbiting satellites experience, and to temperatures in excess of 500°C. Solar Orbiter’s main body will be protected from direct sunlight by a Sun-facing multi-layer titanium heat shield. The 1.1-m diameter high-gain antenna seen here will be deployed from the body of the spacecraft to, transmit science data back to Earth in high-bandwidth X-band. The antenna’s black colour is unusual. It is covered with the same kind of protective, high temperature coating as the front of Solar Orbiter’s heatshield, based on burnt-bone charcoal. Developed by Irish company ENBIO, this ‘Solar Black’ coating was selected because it can maintain the same colour and surface properties despite years of exposure to unfiltered sunlight and ultraviolet radiation. The high-gain antenna is placed at the end of a manoeuvrable 1-m long boom allowing Solar Orbiter to maintain a reliable, high-bandwidth link with Earth throughout its science-gathering phase. This test campaign – using powerful lamps to simulate the Sun’s radiation – began by simulating the conditions the spacecraft will undergo as it manoeuvres to its operational orbit through flybys of Earth and Venus.
  • Slide 124 of 146: A demonstration of how the Low Wind Effect (LWE) affects astronomical images.
  • Slide 125 of 146: Getting a science experiment on the world’s only floating outpost in Earth orbit is a costly and time-consuming endeavour. ICE Cubes is ESA’s faster, lower cost answer to making science happen in space. The International Commercial Experiment Cubes or ICE Cubes is a facility that houses modular experiments on the International Space Station. The 10 x 10 x 10 cm cubes, like the one in this photo taken by Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, houses an experiment developed by the International Space University based in Strasbourg, France. Experiments are sent to the Space Station on regular cargo missions. Once in space, the cubes are plugged into the facility by an astronaut and voila, science can begin! A dedicated control centre in Belgium allows researchers 24/7 access to their experiment data via secure remote login. The data coming from the Columbus laboratory can be monitored at any time of the day and customers can even send commands to the experiment cubes to change parameters or start a next step in the experiment. The ICE Cubes service is based on a partnership between Space Applications Services and ESA and is part of ESA’s strategy to ensure access to weightless research in low Earth orbit.
  • Slide 126 of 146: The Milky Way, our own galaxy, stretches across the sky over Paranal, the site of ESO's VLT. Paranal has about 300 clear nights per year, which, combined with the VLT's state-of-the-art technology, allows astronomers to observe the Universe in remarkable detail. An individual unit telescope at the VLT can see objects four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye, while combining the telescopes allows astronomers to see details up to 16 times finer than can be discerned with the individual telescopes.
  • Slide 127 of 146: VIS image shows a small portion of the immense lava plains of Daedalia Planum. These flows originated from Arsia Mons, one of the three large Tharsis volcanoes. Orbit Number: 75238 Latitude: -19.446 Longitude: 221.612 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2018-11-30 08:56
  • Slide 128 of 146: Aerial view of the VLT at Paranal Observatory. Visible are the four large 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs), as well as the smaller 1.8-m Auxillary Telescopes used during interferometry, when the UTs combine to act as one larger telescope. The telescope at the far rigtht of the observatory in the image is the 2.6-metre VLT Survey Telescope (VST), whose wide field of view is used to survey large areas of the sky in order to locate objects for larger telescopes, including the VLT, to observe.
  • Slide 129 of 146: This image shows a cross-section of a complex crater in Terra Cimmeria. Starting in the center, we see a series of peaks with exposed bedrock. These peaks formed during the impact event when material that was originally several kilometers below the surface was uplifted and exposed. The impact also melted the rocks. This eventually cooled, forming the pitted materials that coat the crater floor around the uplift. The rim of the crater was unstable, and collapsed inwards to form terraces, and we see additional pitted materials between the terraces and the rim. Just outside the crater we can see dark-toned material that was excavated and thrown out after the impact. The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 51.4 centimeters (20.2 inches) per pixel (with 2 x 2 binning); objects on the order of 154 centimeters (60.6 inches) across are resolved.] North is up. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
  • Slide 130 of 146: This image shows a new impact crater that formed between July and September 2018. It's notable because it occurred in the seasonal southern ice cap, and has apparently punched through it, creating a two-toned blast pattern. The impact hit on the ice layer, and the tones of the blast pattern tell us the sequence. When an impactor hits the ground, there is a tremendous amount of force like an explosion. The larger, lighter-colored blast pattern could be the result of scouring by winds from the impact shockwave. The darker-colored inner blast pattern is because the impactor penetrated the thin ice layer, excavated the dark sand underneath, and threw it out in all directions on top of the layer. The map is projected here at a scale of 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel. [The original image scale is 24.8 centimeters (9.8 inches) per pixel (with 1 x 1 binning); objects on the order of 74 centimeters (29.1 inches) across are resolved.] North is up. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
  • Slide 131 of 146: Dawn captured this view on May 19, 2018. The image shows the limb of Ceres at about 270E, 30N looking south. The spatial resolution is about 200 feet (60 meters) per pixel in the nearest parts of the image. The impact crater to the right (only partially visible) is Ninsar, named after a Sumerian goddess of plants and vegetation. It is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter. The conclusion of Dawn's mission operations was Oct. 31, 2018, when the spacecraft depleted its hydrazine used for attitude control. Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorates Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. JPL is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.
  • Slide 132 of 146: Severnaya Zemlya is an archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It was first charted in 1930, making it the last large archipelago on Earth to be explored. It consists of four main islands: October Revolution, Bolshevik, Komsomolets, and Pioneer. All are mostly glaciated; the glaciers have a characteristic dome shape. This image of the center of October Revolution Island shows two of these glaciers. The ice-free areas between the glaciers expose folded sedimentary rocks. The image was acquired September 18, 2012, covers an area of 45.6 by 48.3 kilometers, and is located at 79.8 degrees north, 96.1 degrees east. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of about 50 to 300 feet (15 to 90 meters), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and data products. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
  • Slide 133 of 146: Fans of planet Earth probably recognize the Matterhorn in the foreground of this night skyscape. Famed in mountaineering history, the 4,478 meter Alpine mountain stands next to the totally eclipsed Moon. In spite of -22 degree C temperatures, the inspired scene was captured on the morning of January 21 from the mountains near Zermatt, Switzerland. Different exposures record the dim red light reflected by the Moon fully immersed in Earth's shadow. Seen directly above the famous Alpine peak, but about 600 light-years away, are the stars of the Praesepe or Beehive star cluster also known as Messier 44. An added reward to the cold eclipse vigil, a bright and colorful meteor flashed below the temporarily dimmmed Moon, just tracing the Matterhorn's north-eastern climbing route along Hornli ridge.
  • Slide 134 of 146: The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time  — around 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this shell of glowing ionised gas — the last breath of the dying star whose simmering remains are visible at the heart of this image. As the gaseous shell of this planetary nebula expands and grows dimmer, it will slowly disappear from sight. This stunning planetary nebula was imaged by one of the VLT’s most versatile instruments, FORS2. The instrument captured the bright, central star, Abell 36, as well as the surrounding planetary nebula. The red and blue portions of this image correspond to optical emission at red and blue wavelengths, respectively. An object much closer to home is also visible in this image — an asteroid wandering across the field of view has left a faint track below and to the left of the central star. And in the far distance behind the nebula a glittering host of background galaxies can be seen.
  • Slide 135 of 146: The lunar eclipse that took place in the early hours of Monday 21 January kicks off a major year for our satellite. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first crewed landing on the Moon. After more than four decades, the Moon is again in the spotlight of space agencies worldwide as a destination for both robotic missions and human explorers. But first, the lunar eclipse. The phenomenon known as a total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes directly between the Moon and the Sun, hiding the light that illuminates the surface of our satellite. As the Moon passes through the shadow of Earth it appears in orange and red hues. This is because a small portion of sunlight is refracted by the Earth's atmosphere and mostly red light reaches the Moon. Many across Europe woke in the early hours to view this phenomenon and shared their images on social media. The images were stunning across the continent, but particularly over Lake Maggiore. This image of the eclipse at totality was taken at 06:23 CET by Alberto Negro. In collaboration with international partners, ESA is preparing to go forward to the Moon on several missions to be developed over the next few years. ESA has already delivered a key component to the NASA Orion spacecraft that will take humans back to the Moon. The European Service Module, the powerhouse engine that will propel the spacecraft, is currently undergoing mating and testing with the rest of the spacecraft in the United States. Moving away from one-shot orbital missions, ESA is also teaming up with international partners on missions to explore the polar regions hand-in-hand with robots, in international cooperation and commercial participation. Learn more about our closest neighbour in the Solar System in our interactive exploration guide or this new set of infographics.
  • Slide 136 of 146: ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and ESA spacewalk instructor Hervé Stevenin analysing rock samples in close interaction with planetary geologists during the Pangaea-X campaign in November 2018. Pangaea-X is a test campaign that brings together geology, high-tech survey equipment and space exploration. Astronauts, scientists, operations experts and instrumentation engineers work side-by-side to advance European know-how of integrated human and robotics mission operations. An extension of ESA’s Pangaea geology training, the training involves working with the latest technologies in instrumentation, navigation, remote sensing, 3D imaging and geoscience equipment.
  • Slide 137 of 146: The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time   — around 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this shell of glowing ionised gas — the last breath of the dying star whose simmering remains are visible at the heart of this image. As the gaseous shell of this planetary nebula expands and grows dimmer, it will slowly disappear from sight. The image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), and shows the region surrounding ESO 577-24, faintly visible in blue at the centre of the image.
  • Slide 138 of 146: This ethereal image was taken by Daniel Michalik, currently a research fellow at ESA. It was shortlisted as a finalist in the Royal Society photography competition in 2017, and went on to become the overall winner in the ‘Astronomy’ category – and it’s easy to see why. It captures a beautiful scene at the Earth’s South Pole in Antarctica, where the dry, cold conditions allow for observations of a number of rare celestial phenomena that are seen far less often elsewhere. The sight captured beautifully here by Daniel is a good example of such a phenomenon: a light pillar. The Moon illuminates a column of bright light between it and the frozen plateau below, creating a scene akin to a dramatic lunar spotlight beaming downwards. This is caused by moonlight reflecting from and refracting through ice crystals suspended in our planet’s atmosphere, producing a diffuse, eerie glow. Atmospheric ice crystals are behind a number of the phenomena showcased wonderfully at the South Pole, including halos and arcs (glowing rings that encircle the Sun or Moon in the sky), as well as sun and moon dogs (bright, circular spots of light that sometimes appear along these halos around the Sun or Moon). Jupiter can be seen as a bright spot to the upper left of the Moon. This photograph is one single long exposure with minor contrast and exposure adjustments, taken at -60°C. Daniel wintered at the Geographic South Pole in 2017 while he worked at the 10-metre South Pole Telescope (SPT), visible here as the leftmost radio dish. The other two dishes visible are BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2), and the Keck Array. These telescopes are exploring the very earliest days of the cosmos. They are located in the Dark Sector of the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, where any sources of electro-magnetic interference that could potentially affect the observations are kept as low as possible. This means no wifi, no radio contact, and no bright lights in this area, amongst others. A line of flags is visible snaking away from the camera towards these telescopes – it helps astronomers and staff find their way to the site during the five months of continuous winter darkness. The Moon creates a number of fascinating and unique sights for terrestrial observers, perhaps the most famous being eclipses. The most recent lunar eclipse – when the Earth slips between the Moon and the Sun, casting its shadow onto our satellite – occurred during the early hours of this morning. The total lunar eclipse could be seen from North America, South America, and parts of western and northern Europe and Africa. While the Moon has not welcomed human visitors since the 1970s, it is again becoming a target for space agencies. The Moon is a key reference point for understanding the evolution of the early Solar System. There is also renewed interest in a long-term human presence on the Moon as it offers great potential as a ‘springboard’ for humans to explore other regions of space – Mars being the next goal.
  • Slide 139 of 146: (Dec. 18 , 2018) --- Expedition 58 Flight Engineers Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency pose for a portrait inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos is pictured in the background inside the Unity module which connects the International Space Station's U.S. segment to the Russian segment.
  • Slide 140 of 146: This huge ball of stars — around 100 billion in total — is an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years away from us. Known as Messier 89, this galaxy appears to be perfectly spherical; this is unusual for elliptical galaxies, which tend to be elongated ellipsoids. The apparently spherical nature of Messier 89 could, however, be a trick of perspective, and be caused by its orientation relative to the Earth. Messier 89 is slightly smaller than the Milky Way, but has a few interesting features that stretch far out into the surrounding space. One structure of gas and dust extends up to 150 000 light-years out from the galaxy’s centre, which is known to house a supermassive black hole. Jets of heated particles reach out to 100 000 light-years from the galaxy, suggesting that Messier 89 may have once been far more active — perhaps an active quasar or radio galaxy — than it is now. It is also surrounded by an extensive system of shells and plumes, which may have been caused by past mergers with smaller galaxies — and implies that Messier 89 as we know it may have formed in the relatively recent past. Messier 89 was discovered by astronomer Charles Messier in 1781, when Messier had been cataloguing astronomical objects for 23 years — ever since he mistook a faint object in the sky for Halley’s Comet. Upon closer inspection, he realised the object was actually the Crab Nebula. To prevent other astronomers from making the same error, he decided to catalogue all the bright, deep-sky objects that could potentially be mistaken for comets. His methodical observations of the night sky led to the first comprehensive catalogue of astronomical objects: the Messier catalogue! Messier 89 holds the record for being the last ever giant elliptical to be found by Messier, and the most perfectly spherical galaxy in the entire catalogue of 110 objects.
  • Slide 141 of 146: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Gangotri, one of the largest glaciers in the Himalayas and one of the main sources of water for the Ganges River. The Gangotri Glacier is in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. The head of the glacier can be seen in the lower-right of the image near the Chaukhamba Peak. From here, Gangotri flows around 30 km northwest, but like many of the world’s glaciers it is in retreat. Studies suggest that Gangotri has been receding for well over 200 years. Measurements have shown, that it retreated by as much as 35 metres a year between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s. While this has now reduced to about 10 metres a year, observations show that the glacier is thinning. The glacier’s terminus is called Gomukh, which means ‘mouth of a cow’, presumed to describe what the snout of this huge glacier once resembled. Importantly, the headwaters of the Bhagirathi River form here. In Hindu culture and mythology, this is considered to be the source of the Ganges and consequentially the destination for many spiritual pilgrimages and treks. Gomukh is a 20 km trek from the village of Gangotri, which is in the top left of the image. While Gomukh and Gangotri have much spiritual significance, the Bhagirathi River offers an important supply of freshwater as well as power as it passes through a number of power stations, including the Tehri hydroelectric complex 200 km downstream (not pictured). Gangotri is in an area also known as ‘the third pole’, which encompasses the Himalaya-Hindu Kush mountain range and the Tibetan Plateau. The high-altitude ice fields in this region contain the largest reserve of freshwater outside the polar regions. With such a large portion of the world’s population dependent on water from these cold heights, changes in the size and flow of these glaciers can bring serious consequences for society by affecting the amount of water arriving downstream. From the vantage point of space, satellites, such as the Copernicus Sentinels, provide essential information to monitor the changing face of Earth’s glaciers, which are typically in remote regions and therefore difficult to monitor systematically from the ground. This image, which was captured on 7 January 2018, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
  • Slide 142 of 146: This image of Jupiter's turbulent southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed its most recent close flyby of the gas giant planet on Dec. 21, 2018. This new perspective captures the notable Great Red Spot, as well as a massive storm called Oval BA. The storm reached its current size when three smaller spots collided and merged in the year 2000. The Great Red Spot, which is about twice as wide as Oval BA, may have formed from the same process centuries ago. Juno captured Oval BA in another image earlier on in the mission on Feb. 7, 2018. The turbulent regions around, and even the shape of, the storm have significantly changed since then. Oval BA further transformed in recent months, changing color from reddish to a more uniform white. Juno took the three images used to produce this color-enhanced view on Dec. 21, between 9:32 a.m. PST (12:32 p.m. EST) and 9:42 a.m. PST (12:42 p.m. EST). At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between approximately 23,800 miles (38,300 kilometers) to 34,500 miles (55,500 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops above southern latitudes spanning 49.15 to 59.59 degrees. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. JunoCam's raw images are available at www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam for the public to peruse and process into image products.
  • Slide 143 of 146: Do you recognize this constellation? Through the icicles and past the mountains is Orion, one of the most identifiable star groupings on the sky and an icon familiar to humanity for over 30,000 years. Orion has looked pretty much the same during the past 50,000 years and should continue to look the same for many thousands of years into the future. Orion is quite prominent in the sky this time of year, a recurring sign of (modern) winter in Earth's northern hemisphere and summer in the south. Pictured, Orion was captured recently above the Austrian Alps in a composite of seven images taken by the same camera in the same location during the same night. Below and slightly to the right of Orion's three-star belt is the Orion Nebula, while the four bright stars surrounding the belt are, clockwise from the upper left, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph.
  • Slide 144 of 146: A Long March-3B rocket carrying Zhongxing-2D satellite blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on January 11, 2019 in Liangshan, Sichuan Province of China. The satellite has entered the preset orbit.
  • Slide 145 of 146: Screenshot of ESOcast 190: Chile Chill 12 — Fire in the Heavens. Watch it on https://www.eso.org/public/videos/esocast190a/
  • Slide 146 of 146: This artist's illustration shows the planetary system K2-138, which was discovered by citizen scientists in 2017 using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope. Five planets were initially detected in the system. In 2018, scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence of a sixth planet in the system. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. NASA Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
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1/146 SLIDES © .nsf.gov

First Image of a Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. On April 10, 2019, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. This breakthrough was announced in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.

2/146 SLIDES © ESO/G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)

'Halo, World!'

A sun halo shines from the sky above ESO's Paranal Observatory. In the lower right corner the light is reflected from one of the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT), ESO's flagship telescope. The VLT is the world's most advanced optical instrument, and the world's most productive ground-based facility, enabling it to take advantage of the 300 clear nights Paranal has per year. As demonstrated in this photograph, however, breathtaking phenomena are not only visible during the night.

3/146 SLIDES © Nicolle R. Fuller/NSF

Photon Paths Around a Black Hole

This artist’s impression depicts the paths of photons in the vicinity of a black hole. The gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon is the cause of the shadow captured by the Event Horizon Telescope.
4/146 SLIDES © ESO

Anatomy of a Black Hole

This artist’s impression depicts a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disc. This thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole. The black hole is labelled, showing the anatomy of this fascinating object.
5/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.

Largest of Its Kind

Star clusters are commonly featured in cosmic photoshoots, and are also well-loved by the keen eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These large gatherings of celestial gems are striking sights — and the subject of this Picture of the Week, Messier 2, is certainly no exception. Messier 2 is located in the constellation of Aquarius (The Water-Bearer), about 55 000 light-years away. It is a globular cluster, a spherical group of stars all tightly bound together by gravity. With a diameter of roughly 175 light-years, a population of 150,000 stars, and an age of 13 billion years, Messier 2 is one of the largest clusters of its kind and one of the oldest associated with the Milky Way. 
6/146 SLIDES © ESA/NASA

Weather Drama in Portugal and Spain

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took this picture of Portugal and Spain from the International Space Station on 6 August 2018. Alexander commented on the photo: "Dramatic weather pattern over Portugal today. Looks like a mixture of dust, sand and smoke." The trio’s landing in the Kazakh steppe marked the successful conclusion of over six months in space during which Alexander conducted over 60 European experiments, became the second ever European commander of the International Space Station, welcomed six resupply vehicles, installed the first commercial facility for research in the Columbus laboratory, delivered an important message on climate change for leaders at the COP24 climate change conference, captured real-time footage of a Soyuz launch abort and much, much more. Horizons was Alexander’s second mission to the International Space Station – the first was Blue Dot in 2014.
7/146 SLIDES © ESA/XMM-Newton; Acknowledgement: P. Rodriguez

Black Hole Activity

The core of massive galaxy M87 as viewed in X-rays by ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory. A giant elliptical galaxy, M87 is home to several trillion stars, making it one of the most massive galaxies in the local Universe. About 52 million light years away, it is located at the centre of the Virgo cluster, the nearest cluster of galaxies to the Local Group, to which our own Milky Way galaxy belongs. A supermassive black hole as massive as billions of stars like our Sun sits at the core of M87, accreting material from its surroundings at an extremely intense rate. The black hole’s accretion produces powerful jets that launch energetic particles close to the speed of light outwards into the surrounding cluster environment, as well as inflating giant bubbles that lift cooler gas from the cluster center and form the filamentary structures visible in this image. 
8/146 SLIDES © NASA

The 'Eye of the Sahara'

From an altitude of 255 miles, an Expedition 59 crewmember photographed the Richat Structure, or the "Eye of the Sahara," in northwestern Mauritania. The circular geologic feature is thought to be caused by an uplifted dome—geologists would classify it as a domed anticline—that has been eroded to expose the originally flat rock layers.
9/146 SLIDES © NAOJ/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Jupiter Poles: Hot From Solar Wind

Sensitive to Jupiter's stratospheric temperatures, these infrared images were recorded by the Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (COMICS) at the Subaru Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Scientists used red, blue and yellow to infuse this infrared image; regions of the atmosphere that are more yellow and red indicate the hotter areas. This highlights the auroral heating that occurs at Jupiter's poles, where energy from the solar wind and magnetosphere are deposited. This image was captured on Jan. 12, 2017. This work was supported by a NASA Keck PI Data Award, administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.
10/146 SLIDES © ESO

Messier 87

Messier 87 (M87) is an enormous elliptical galaxy located about 55 million light years from Earth, visible in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781, but not identified as a galaxy until 20th Century. At double the mass of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and containing as many as ten times more stars, it is amongst the largest galaxies in the local universe. It contains an unusually high number of globular clusters: while our Milky Way contains under 200, M87 has about 12,000, which some scientists theorise it collected from its smaller neighbours. Just as with all other large galaxies, M87 has a supermassive black hole at its centre. This image was captured by FORS2 on ESO’s Very Large Telescope as part of the Cosmic Gems programme, an outreach initiative that uses ESO telescopes to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects for the purposes of education and public outreach. 
11/146 SLIDES © ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

Dust Devil Detail

Mars may have a reputation for being a desolate world, but it is certainly not dead: its thin atmosphere is still capable of whipping up a storm and, as this image reveals, send hundreds – maybe even thousands – of 'dust devils' scurrying across the surface. These swirling columns of wind scour away the top layer of surface material and transport it elsewhere. Their course is plotted by the streaks they leave behind – the newly exposed surface material, which is coloured in blue/grey in this recent image from the CaSSIS camera onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. 
12/146 SLIDES © P. Horálek/ESO

ALMA

High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), together with its international partners, is operating the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe. This light has wavelengths of around a millimetre, between infrared light and radio waves, and is therefore known as millimetre and submillimetre radiation. ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas, spread over distances of up to 16 kilometres, and is the largest ground-based astronomical project in existence. This panorama shows ALMA antennas underneath the arching Milky Way. ALMA plays a key role in the Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-scale array of eight ground-based telescopes designed to capture images of a black hole.
13/146 SLIDES © NASA

Snow and Sand in Central Asia

In December 2018, an astronaut on the International Space Station took this highly oblique photograph of snow on the eastern Tien Shan and Taklimakan Desert in Central Asia. The Tien Shan (or Tian Shan) is one of the longest continuous mountain ranges in the world, stretching across 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) in northwest China, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Tien Shan Mountains, sometimes called Central Asia’s Water Tower, provide essential fresh water to the area. Since the Taklimakan Desert is a low-lying basin enclosed by mountain ranges on three sides, a rain shadow keeps the region extremely dry for most of the year.
14/146 SLIDES © Mario Zauner/ NASA

Wisps Surrounding the Horsehead Nebula

The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just below center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead's pasture, an amateur astronomer used a backyard telescope in Austria to accumulate and artistically combine 7.5 hours of images in the light of Hydrogen (red), Oxygen (green), and Sulfur (blue). The resulting spectacular picture details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The Flame Nebula is visible just to the left of the Horsehead, while the bright star on the upper left is Alnilam, the central star in Orion's Belt. The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion.

15/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble

Asteroid 6478 Gault

The asteroid 6478 Gault is seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars. The Gault asteroid is located 214 million miles from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
16/146 SLIDES © NASA

Cloud Formation in the South Indian Ocean

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station snapped this image as the station flew 265 miles above this cloudy formation in the south Indian Ocean. (NASA)
17/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble

Wild Cosmic Ducks

This star-studded image shows us a portion of Messier 11, an open star cluster in the southern constellation of Scutum (The Shield). Messier 11 is also known as the Wild Duck Cluster, as its brightest stars form a “V” shape that somewhat resembles a flock of ducks in flight. Messier 11 is one of the richest and most compact open clusters currently known. By investigating the brightest, hottest main sequence stars in the cluster astronomers estimate that it formed roughly 220 million years ago. 
18/146 SLIDES © NASA

Nick Hague Completes 215th Spacewalk

Astronaut Nick Hague performs a spacewalk on March 29, 2019.
19/146 SLIDES © Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Bosphorus Strait, Turkey

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this image shows the narrow strait that connects eastern Europe to western Asia: the Bosphorus in northwest Turkey. The image contains satellite data stitched together from three radar scans acquired on 2 June, 8 July and 13 August 2018. Separating the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, the strait is one of the busiest maritime passages in the world, with around 48,000 ships passing through every year. 
20/146 SLIDES © ESA/S. Marti

Ready to Communicate

ESA’s technology and communications infrastructure operates 24 hours per day, year round, and comprises a series of smaller-sized stations to link frequently orbiting Earth missions with ground controllers as well as the 'big iron' – three start-of-the-art dish antennas that allow ESA to locate and keep in touch with spacecraft.
21/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Space Butterfly

What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named W40, the butterfly is a nebula - a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form. The butterfly's two "wings" are giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region. The material that forms W40's wings was ejected from a dense cluster of stars that lies between the wings in the image. 
22/146 SLIDES © ESO/L. Calçada

GRAVITY Instrument Breaks New Ground

The GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has made the first direct observation of an exoplanet using optical interferometry. This method revealed a complex exoplanetary atmosphere with clouds of iron and silicates swirling in a planet-wide storm. The technique presents unique possibilities for characterising many of the exoplanets known today. This artist’s impression shows the observed exoplanet, which goes by the name HR8799e.
23/146 SLIDES © ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin.

Surroundings of Star HR 8799

This wide-field image shows the surroundings of the young star HR8799 in the constellation of Pegasus. This picture was created from material forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
24/146 SLIDES © modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Receding Waters

It is thought that well over a million people have been affected by what is probably the worst storm on record to hit the southern hemisphere. Making landfall on 15 March 2019, Cyclone Idai ripped through Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, razing buildings to the ground, destroying roads and inundating entire towns, villages and swathes of farmland. The human death toll is still unknown. While humanitarian efforts continue, people are now also facing the mammoth task of picking up the pieces and cleaning up after this devastating storm. This Copernicus Sentinel-1 image indicates where the flood waters are finally beginning to recede west of the port city of Beira in Mozambique. 
25/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Lunar Flashlight from Above (Artist's Concept)

This artist's concept shows a view from above the Lunar Flashlight spacecraft, a six-unit CubeSat designed to search for ice on the Moon's surface using special lasers. The spacecraft uses its near-infrared lasers to shine light into shaded polar regions on the Moon, while an on-board reflectometer measures surface reflection and composition.
26/146 SLIDES © NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

Bennu in Stereo

This set of stereoscopic images provides a 3D view of the large, 170-foot (52-meter) boulder that juts from asteroid Bennu’s southern hemisphere and the rocky slopes that surround it. The stereo pair was created by stereo image processing scientists Dr. Brian May, who is also the lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, and Claudia Manzoni. In January, May and Manzoni formally joined NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission science team as collaborators to create stereoscopic data products, which will be used by the team while selecting a sample collection site on B
27/146 SLIDES © NASA

Nick Hague Completes Spacewalk

NASA astronaut Nick Hague completed the first spacewalk of his career on Friday, March 22, 2019. He and fellow astronaut Anne McClain worked on a set of battery upgrades for six hours and 39 minutes, on the International Space Station’s starboard truss.
28/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Blakenslee, P Cote et al.

Invisible X-Rays

This fuzzy orb of light is a giant elliptical galaxy filled with an incredible 200 billion stars. Unlike spiral galaxies, which have a well-defined structure and boast picturesque spiral arms, elliptical galaxies appear fairly smooth and featureless. This is likely why this galaxy, named Messier 49, was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. At a distance of 56 million light-years, and measuring 157 000 light-years across, M49 was the first member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies to be discovered, and it is more luminous than any other galaxy at its distance or nearer.
29/146 SLIDES © ESO/Daniele Gasparri

Big Questions, Big Telescopes

One of the four unit telescopes at the VLT under a clear night at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Each of the unit telescopes has a main mirror 8.2 metres in diameter, making them some of the largest single-mirror telescopes in the world. They can be used individually or together and, when combined, are equivalent to a single-mirror telescope of 16 metres, effectively the largest optical telescope in the world. Leading to the publication of an average of more than one peer-reviewed scientific paper per day, the VLT is helping astronomers to answer some of the biggest questions about our Universe.
30/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Jupiter Marble

This striking view of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and turbulent southern hemisphere was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed a close pass of the gas giant planet.
31/146 SLIDES © ESA/NASA, SOH

Soho’s Equinox Sun

Last Wednesday, all locations on our planet enjoyed roughly the same number of hours of day and night. This event, called an equinox, takes place twice a year – around 20 March and then again around 23 September. On these two occasions along Earth’s yearly orbit around the Sun, sunlight shines directly overhead at the equator. The March equinox marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and of autumn in the southern one, and vice versa for the September equinox. The ESA/NASA SOHO solar observatory enjoys an alternative view of our parent star, staring at the Sun since 1995 from a vantage position – orbiting the first Lagrange point (L1) some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth towards the Sun.
32/146 SLIDES © P. Horálek/ESO

Nature's Fireworks

This astonishing image clearly illustrates why astronomical observatories are usually built in remote, and often inhospitable, places. At ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, the sky is so clear and untroubled by man-made sources of light that it appears as if a brightly-coloured celestial firework display is in progress! This photograph, taken by ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek, has been digitally projected to show as much of the sky as possible. This is why the roads leading to ESO’s 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (left) and 3.6-metre telescope (right) appear distorted, and the bright river of light that is the Milky Way seems to curve across the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon. 
33/146 SLIDES © ESA

Vega Lifts Off

On March 21, 2019, Vega flight VV14 lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to deliver the Italian Space Agency's Earth observation satellite Prisma into orbit.
34/146 SLIDES © Northrup Grumman

Hot-Fire Test

A static hot-fire test of the Orion spacecraft's Launch Abort System Attitude Control Motor to help qualify the motor for human spaceflight, to help ensure Orion is ready from liftoff to splashdown for missions to the Moon.
35/146 SLIDES © ESA/NASA

Water on Space Station

ESA astronaut Samanth Cristoforetti with water on the International Space Station during her Futura mission.
36/146 SLIDES © NASA

Waxing Gibbous Moon

A waxing gibbous Moon is seen above Earth's limb as the International Space Station was orbiting 266 miles above the South Atlantic Ocean.

Speaking of the Moon, from Earth on the night of March 20, the last supermoon of 2019 will be visible in the night sky, coinciding with the spring equinox. What's so special about a supermoon? Indeed, what is a supermoon?

The term “supermoon” was coined in 1979 and is used to describe what astronomers would call a perigean (pear-ih-jee-un) full moon: a full Moon occurring near or at the time when the Moon is at its closest point in its orbit around Earth.

Learn more about supermoons.

37/146 SLIDES © ESO

Starshine in Canis Major

It’s impossible to miss the star in this ESO Picture of the Week — beaming proudly from the center of the frame is the massive multiple star system Tau Canis Majoris, the brightest member of the Tau Canis Majoris Cluster (NGC 2362) in the eponymous constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Tau Canis Majoris aside, the cluster is populated by many young and less attention-seeking stars that are only four or five million years old, all just beginning their cosmic lifetimes.

The Tau Canis Majoris Cluster is an open cluster — a group of stars born from the same molecular cloud. This means that all of the cluster’s inhabitants share a common chemical composition and are loosely bound together by gravity. Having been born together, they make an ideal stellar laboratory to test theories of stellar evolution, the chain of events that leads from a star’s birth in a cool, dense cloud of gas through to its eventual death. 

38/146 SLIDES © processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Cyclone Idai

Captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission, this image shows Cyclone Idai on March 13, 2019 west of Madagascar and heading for Mozambique. The storm went on to cause widespread destruction in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

39/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars 2020 System Test 1

Technicians approach their workstation in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Over two weeks in January 2019, 72 engineers and technicians assigned to the 2020 mission took over the High Bay 1 cleanroom in JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility to put the software and electrical systems aboard the mission's cruise, entry capsule, descent stage and rover through their paces.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build and manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

40/146 SLIDES © processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Bering in Dire Straits

The Bering Strait is a sea passage that separates Russia and Alaska. It is usually covered with sea ice at this time of year – but as this image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission on 7 March 2019 shows, it is virtually ice-free.

The extent of sea ice in the Bering Sea has dropped lower than it has been since written records began in 1850, and is most likely because of warm air and water temperatures. On average, the fluctuating sea ice in this region increases until early April, depending on wind and wave movement. 

41/146 SLIDES © ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope

The Cosmic Bat in the Constellation Ori

This chart shows the location of the reflection nebula NGC 1788 in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). The map includes most of the stars visible to the unaided eye under good conditions, and the region of sky shown in this image is indicated.
42/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Saturn at Equinox

Saturn is famous for its bright, glorious rings but in this picture, taken during Saturn's 2009 equinox, the rings are cast in a different light as sunlight hits the rings edge-on.

The equinox is a point in a planet's orbit where the Sun shines directly overhead at the equator. It occurs twice per orbit and on Earth it happens in March and September. At the equinox, day and night are almost equal and the Sun rises due east and sets due west. This year, for northern hemisphere dwellers, the spring equinox occurs on 20 March.

Further afield, the international Cassini mission captured a Saturnian equinox for the first time on 12 August 2009. Saturn's equinoxes occur approximately every 15 Earth years and the next one will take place on 6 May 2025. When Saturn's equinox is viewed from Earth, the rings are seen edge-on and appear as a thin line – sometimes giving the illusion they’ve disappeared. In this image however, Cassini had a vantage point of 20 degrees above the ring plane, and viewed the planet from a distance of 847,000 kilometres. Its wide angle camera took 75 exposures over eight hours, which were then aligned and combined to create this mosaic.

As the Sun is striking the rings straight on, rather than illuminating them from above or below, the shadows cast by the rings onto the planet are compressed into a single narrow band on the planet. 

43/146 SLIDES © processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Grande America Oil Spill

Captured March 19 by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this image shows the oil spill from the Grande America vessel. The Italian container ship, carrying 2,200 tons of heavy fuel, caught fire and sank in the Atlantic off the French coast on March 12.

Oil is still emerging from the ship now lying at a depth of around 4500 metres. French authorities are trying to reduce the impact of pollution along the coast.

Satellite radar is particularly useful for monitoring the progression of oil spills because the presence of oil on the sea surface dampens down wave motion. Since radar basically measures surface texture, oil slicks show up well – as black smears on a grey background.

44/146 SLIDES © ESA–G. Porter, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Juice's Magnetometer Boom

A test version of the magnetometer boom built for ESA’s mission to Jupiter is seen being tested in the Netherlands, its weight borne by balloons.

The flight model will be mounted on the Juice spacecraft – Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – due to launch in 2022, arriving at Jupiter in 2029. The mission will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

The Juice spacecraft will carry the most powerful remote sensing, geophysical, and in situ payload complement ever flown to the outer Solar System. Its payload consists of 10 state-of-the-art instruments.

This includes a magnetometer instrument that the boom will project clear of the main body of the spacecraft, allowing it to make measurements clear of any magnetic interference. Its goal is to measure Jupiter’s magnetic field, its interaction with the internal magnetic field of Ganymede, and to study subsurface oceans of the icy moons.

The deployment of this qualification model boom has been performed before and after simulated launch vibration on Test Centre shaker tables to ensure it will deploy correctly in space. Since the boom will deploy in weightlessness, three helium balloons were used to help bear its weight in terrestrial gravity.

45/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Hale Crater

This long image is entirely over the extensive central peak complex of Hale Crater.

Of particular interest are bedrock outcrops and associated fine-grained sediments with different colors. This crater was named after American astronomer George Ellery Hale. 

46/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Complex Gullies in a Crater

Most gullies in the southern mid-latitudes are on south-facing slopes, which are the coldest and have the most frost in the winter. However, some occur on other slopes. This image shows large gullies on both the pole- and equator-facing slopes.

An important puzzle in Mars science is whether or not all of these gullies form in the same geologic eras and by the same processes. 

47/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Lonely Vigil

With the backshell that will help protect the Mars 2020 rover during its descent into the Martian atmosphere visible in the foreground, a technician on the project monitors the progress of Systems Test 1. Over two weeks in January 2019, 72 engineers and technicians assigned to the 2020 mission took over the High Bay 1 cleanroom in JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility to put the software and electrical systems aboard the mission's cruise, entry capsule, descent stage and rover through their paces.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will build and manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

48/146 SLIDES © NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Atlantic Ocean Road, Norway

The Atlantic Ocean Road in Norway consists of eight bridges and four resting places and viewpoints. The road was originally proposed as a railway line, but that was abandoned. The road was opened in July 1989, and has been declared the world's best road trip. The image was acquired July 2, 2008, covers an area of 8.9 by 11.8 kilometers, and is located at 63 degrees north, 7.3 degrees east.

With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of about 50 to 300 feet (15 to 90 meters), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and data products.

The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance.

The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

More information about ASTER is available at http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/

49/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Everything is (Well) Illuminated

The south polar layered deposits are icy layers that have been deposited over millions of years, preserving a climate history of Mars. In this image the layers are well illuminated to accentuate the topography. 

50/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Justin Cowart

Jupiter Jet and Brown Barge

The southern edge of Jupiter's north polar region is captured in this view from NASA's Juno spacecraft. The scene prominently displays a long, brown oval known as a "brown barge" located within a polar jet stream, called "Jet N4." 

51/146 SLIDES © NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Criss-Crossing Lunar Transit

On March 6, 2019, SDO observed a long lunar transit -- with a twist. The shadow of the Moon in SDO's images first touched the limb of the Sun at 2200 UTC (5 p.m. EST) on Mar. 6, making its way across and finally left the solar disk at 0209 UTC on Mar. 7 (9:09 p.m. EST, Mar. 6). The moon's apparent reversal is caused by SDO first overtaking the moon in its orbit, then the moon catching up as SDO swings around Earth's dusk side. During the transit the Sun moves in the frame as the telescopes cool and flex in the lunar shadow. Note that the edge of the Moon is very sharp because it has no atmosphere.

52/146 SLIDES © Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

New Zealand From Above

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over New Zealand, with the image centered over Cook Strait between the North and South Islands.

Captured on August 22, 2018, this true-color image shows the snow-covered Southern Alps stretching across the west coast of the South Island.

On the island’s east coast, bright turquoise colours in the Pacific Ocean suggest the presence of sediment being carried into the ocean by river discharge as well as algal blooms. 

53/146 SLIDES © NASA/Bill Ingalls

Rollout to the Launch Pad

The Soyuz rocket is transported by train to the launch pad on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan ahead of its launch on March 14. 

54/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

InSight's Deck Camera Observes Phobos Eclipse

NASA's InSight lander took this series of images on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, capturing the moment when Phobos, one of Mars' moons, crossed in front of the Sun and darkened the ground around the lander. These images were taken by InSight's Instrument Context Camera (ICC), located under the lander's deck.

The images were taken at intervals of about 50 seconds in order to capture the eclipse, which on this day lasted 26.7 seconds. The shadow of the lander can be seen moving to the right before the entire scene darkened during the moment of the eclipse. 

55/146 SLIDES © NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

From the Moon to Mars

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is seen inside the Super Guppy aircraft on Monday, March 11, 2019, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Super guppy will carry the flight frame with the Orion crew module and service module inside to a testing facility in Sandusky, Ohio, for full thermal vacuum testing.

Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry humans to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain astronauts during their missions and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. Orion missions will launch from NASA’s modernized spaceport at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the agency’s new, powerful heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. On the first integrated mission, Exploration Mission-1, an uncrewed Orion will venture thousands of miles beyond the Moon over the course of about three weeks. The mission will pave the way for flights with astronauts beginning in the early 2020s.

As NASA ventures to the Moon and on to Mars, the agency will work with U.S. companies and international partners to push the boundaries of human exploration forward and is working to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon within the next decade. 

56/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU

Opportunity Legacy Pan (True Color)

This 360-degree panorama is composed of 354 images taken by the Opportunity rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018, or sols (Martian days) 5,084 through 5,111. This is the last panorama Opportunity acquired before the solar-powered rover succumbed to a global Martian dust storm on the same June 10. This version of the scene is presented in approximate true color.

To the right of center and near the top of the frame, the rim of Endeavour Crater rises in the distance. Just to the left of that, rover tracks begin their descent from over the horizon towards the location that would become Opportunity's final resting spot in Perseverance Valley, where the panorama was taken. At the bottom, just left of center, is the rocky outcrop Opportunity was investigating with the instruments on its robotic arm. To the right of center and halfway down the frame is another rocky outcrop - about 23 feet (7 meters) distant from the camera - called "Ysleta del Sur," which Opportunity investigated from March 3 through 29, 2018, or sols 5,015 through 5,038. In the far right and left of the frame are the bottom of Perseverance Valley and the floor of Endeavour Crater.

Located on the inner slope of the western rim of Endeavour Crater, Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward about the length of two football fields from the crest of Endeavour's rim to its floor.

This true-color version combines images collected through three Pancam filters. The filters admit light centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (blue). The three-color bands are combined.

A few frames (bottom left) remain black and white, as the solar-powered rover did not have the time to photograph those locations using the green and violet filters before a severe Mars-wide dust storm swept in on June 2018.

57/146 SLIDES © ESA – S. Corvaja

Cheops in the clean room

The copper-coloured baffle cover of our Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, in the clean room at Airbus Defence and Space Spain, Madrid.

After completing spacecraft testing, the satellite has passed a very important review that determined it is ready to fly. Cheops will be stored in Madrid for a few months before being shipped to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana; launch is scheduled in the time slot between 15 October and 14 November 2019.

The baffle cover pictured in this image is designed to protect the satellite’s scientific instrument – a powerful camera, or photometer – during assembly and launch. Once in space, the cover will open, allowing light from stars to enter the telescope.

Cheops will make observations of exoplanet-hosting stars to measure small changes in their brightness due to the transit of a planet across the star's disc, targeting in particular stars hosting planets in the Earth-to-Neptune size range. The information will enable precise measurements of the sizes of the orbiting planets to be made: combined with measurements of the planet masses, this will provide an estimate of their mean density – a first step to characterising planets outside our Solar System.

Cheops paves the way for the next generation of ESA’s exoplanet satellites, with two further missions – Plato and Ariel – planned for the next decade to tackle different aspects of the evolving field of exoplanet science.

More information: CHEOPS is ready for flight

58/146 SLIDES © ESA

ExoMars locomotion tests

Before Rosalind Franklin, the ExoMars rover, can search for signs of life on Mars, it must learn how to maneuver the landscape. Scientists and engineers are putting the rover through a series of locomotion tests to fine tune how it will respond to a challenging martian terrain.

The ExoMars mission will see Rosalind the rover and its surface platform land on Mars in 2021. There, the rover will move across many types of terrain, from fine-grained soil to large boulders and slopes to collect samples with a drill and analyse them with instruments in its onboard laboratory. Engineers must ensure Rosalind does not get stuck in sand or topple over and that it is able to climb steep slopes and overcome rocks. 

59/146 SLIDES © NASA/Richard A. Ryba

Lift Off

A two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for Demo-1, the first uncrewed mission of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. Liftoff was at 2:49 a.m. EST, March 2, 2019. 

60/146 SLIDES © Ian Griffin

Crossing Our Sun

Humankind's most distant outpost was recently captured crossing the face of our enormous and gleaming Sun. The fleeting transit of the International Space Station was over in the blink of an eye, but Ian Griffin, Director at the Otago Museum of New Zealand, made sure he was in the right place to capture it. 

61/146 SLIDES © ESO

Potential Eclipse

This clear-weather simulation shows how the eclipsed Sun could look like in the sky above La Silla on 2 July 2019 if there are no clouds (more information). An annotated version of this image is available here.

62/146 SLIDES © ESO

A Strong Start

If you had a brand new state-of-the-art telescope facility, what would you look at first? Researchers at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory chose to view the Lagoon Nebula. This magnificent picture is the result, and is one of the SPECULOOS’ first ever observations. The nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in our galaxy where new stars are being born, and is found roughly 5,000 light-years from us. SPECULOOS is located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, taking full advantage of the location’s dark skies, ideal atmospheric conditions, and the support systems ESO has there, from telescope infrastructure to staff accommodation.

63/146 SLIDES © SpaceX

'Go' for Launch

Two days remain until the planned liftoff of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket—the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans. Liftoff is targeted for 2:49 a.m. EST on Saturday, March 2, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Demo-1 mission to the International Space Station serves as an end-to-end test of the system’s capabilities. This photo of Crew Dragon was shared by SpaceX on Feb. 6, 2019.
64/146 SLIDES © NASA/SOFIA/E. Lopez-Rodiguez; NASA/Spitzer/J. Moustakas et al

The Cigar Galaxy's Magnetic Field

A composite image of the Cigar Galaxy (also called M82), a starburst galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The magnetic field detected by the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus instrument (known as HAWC+) on SOFIA (the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), shown as streamlines, appears to follow the bipolar outflows (red) generated by the intense nuclear starburst. The image combines visible starlight (gray) and a tracing of hydrogen gas (red) observed from the Kitt Peak Observatory, with near-infrared and mid-infrared starlight and dust (yellow) observed by SOFIA and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

65/146 SLIDES © NASA

Dawn of a New Era

Astronaut Anne McClain had an unparalleled view from orbit of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft as it approached the International Space Station on Sunday, March 3, 2019. The Crew Dragon docked autonomously to the orbiting laboratory, a historic first for a commercially built and operated American crew spacecraft. This uncrewed test flight is providing valuable information to help verify that Crew Dragon will provide astronauts a safe, comfortable and enjoyable ride to space.
66/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Gullies in Galle

This image was taken of the hills that resulted from uplifted rocks due to an impact that formed the Galle Crater.

These hills form a segment of a circle known as a "peak ring" and this particular formation makes Galle Crater look like a "smiley face" from orbit.

Small gullies, visible in the center of this image, have formed on the flanks of these hills and they have eroded back into the bedrock. The crater itself is probably billions of years old, yet these gullies are likely only hundreds of thousands of years old and may even be active today. 

67/146 SLIDES © NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Spotless February

For the first time in a long time the Sun has gone an entire month without any sunspots (Feb. 1-18, 2019). To put this in context, for five years (2011-2015) surrounding the latest solar maximum in March 2014 - the period when the Sun's magnetic activity is the most intense - there were only three days without any sunspots. What a difference! The change in the level of activity during the Sun's average 11-year solar cycle is quite dramatic. We are probably not quite at the minimum level of activity yet, but are certainly getting close. The images were taken in filtered white (visible) light.

68/146 SLIDES © ESA/NASA

Aurora Australis

Many people hope to catch a glimpse of these reddish-green swirls of color floating in the polar skies. Few are as lucky as ESA astronaut Tim Peake, who captured this dazzling display of the aurora Australis from the International Space Station during his mission in 2016.

This stunning display of light splashed across the sky is a product of severe solar wind lashing against Earth’s protective magnetic shield. 

69/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Colorful Mawrth Vallis

Mawrth Vallis is a place on Mars that has fascinated scientists because of the clays and other hydrated minerals detected from orbit.

In this image, the enhanced black colors are most likely basaltic sands and rocks, while the green, yellow, and blue colors correspond to the different hydrated minerals.

This particular image was taken of a location in Mawrth Vallis that has a mineral called jarosite. Jarosite on Earth forms under wet, oxidizing, and acidic conditions. Another place on Mars where the Opportunity rover landed and explored also has jarosite.

70/146 SLIDES © D. Michalik/NSF/SPT

Antennas and Auroras

This photograph, taken a short hike from the Geographic South Pole in Antarctica, shows some of the antennas comprising the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) array. They are visible here as the chain of antennas and wiring stretching away into the distance. The red lights along the horizon in the background are lights marking the entrances to the Amundsen-Scott research station.

SuperDARN is a network of radar antennas that monitors and explores the geomagnetic effects occurring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. While some of these antennas are located at the South Pole, the network stretches worldwide and antennas are found in both the northern and southern hemispheres. One such geomagnetic effect is neatly captured here as wispy curtains and streaks of green filling the dark night sky above the antennas themselves: an aurora.

Auroras, informally known as polar lights, form as charged particles from the Sun flow into our region of space, hit the outer boundary of Earth’s magnetic field, and move further inwards to collide with the atoms and molecules in our planet’s atmosphere. The aurora seen here is known as aurora australis, or the southern lights.

71/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The Slow Charm of Brain Terrain

You are staring at one of the unsolved mysteries on Mars. This surface texture of interconnected ridges and troughs, referred to as "brain terrain" is found throughout the mid-latitude regions of Mars. (This image is in Protonilus Mensae.)

This bizarrely textured terrain may be directly related to the water-ice that lies beneath the surface. One hypothesis is that when the buried water-ice sublimates (changes from a solid to a gas), it forms the troughs in the ice. The formation of these features might be an active process that is slowly occurring since HiRISE has yet to detect significant changes in these terrains.

72/146 SLIDES © Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA

The Alps

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over the high, snow-studded Alps under clear skies.

The Alps extend 1200 km through eight different countries: France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. This mountain range, which is inhabited by some 20 million people, covers an area of approximately 200 000 sq km.

Captured on 16 February 2019, this true-colour image shows little clouds, particularly over the Alps and the surrounding flatter lands in southern France. There is an interesting contrast between this and the haze hanging over the Po valley in Italy, directly south of the Alps. The haze is most likely to be a mix of both fog and smog, trapped at the base of the Alps owing to both its topography and atmospheric conditions.

Patches of snow are also visible on the island of Corsica, to the left of mainland Italy, Croatia, to the right, and at the bottom of the Apennines in central Italy. Most of Italy’s rivers find their source in the Apennines, including the Tiber and the Arno.

The Adriatic Sea to the east of Italy is visible in turquoise, particularly the coastal area surrounding the Gargano National Park, jutting out. This light-green colour of the sea along the coast is likely to be caused by sediment carried into the sea by river discharge.

Directly to the right of the Alps, the image shows a pale-green Lake Neusiedl straddling the Austrian-Hungarian border. Neusiedl, meaning ‘swamp’ in Hungarian, is the largest endorheic lake in central Europe, meaning water flows into but not out of the lake, hence its size and level frequently fluctuates. It is a popular area for windsurfing, sailing and spotting the woolly Mangalica pig.

To the right, the freshwater Lake Balaton is visible, and is the largest lake in central Europe. It stretches for over 75 km in the southern foothills of Hungary. Its striking emerald-green colour is probably down to the presence of algae that grow in the shallow waters.

Sentinel-3 is a two-satellite mission to supply the coverage and data delivery needed for Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The mission provides critical information for a range of applications from marine observations to large-area vegetation monitoring. The satellite’s instrument package includes an optical sensor to monitor changes in the colour of Earth’s surfaces.

This image is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.

73/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

GOALS Merging Galaxies

These three images show merging galaxies observed for the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey, or GOALS. The merger on the left is Arp 302; in the middle are NGC 7752 and 7753; on the right is IIZw96.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

74/146 SLIDES © NASA/Joel Kowsky

SpaceX Demo-1 Launch

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard launches from Launch Complex 39A, Saturday, March 2, 2019, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its way to the International Space Station. The Demo-1 mission launched at 2:49 a.m. ET and was the first launch of a commercially built and operated American spacecraft and space system designed for humans as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The mission will serve as an end-to-end test of the system's capabilities.
75/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Dramatic Jupiter

Dramatic atmospheric features in Jupiter's northern hemisphere are captured in this view from NASA's Juno spacecraft. The new perspective shows swirling clouds that surround a circular feature within a jet stream region called "Jet N6." This color-enhanced image was taken at 9:20 a.m. PST (12:20 p.m. EST) on Feb. 12, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 18th close flyby of the gas giant planet. At the time, Juno was about 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a latitude of approximately 55 degrees north. The image has been rotated approximately 100 degrees to the right.
76/146 SLIDES © NASA

Amazing Airglow

An image taken from the International Space Station shows orange swaths of airglow hovering in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s new Atmospheric Waves Experiment will observe this airglow from a perch on the space station to help scientists understand, and ultimately improve forecasts of, space weather changes in the upper atmosphere.
77/146 SLIDES © NASA

Spotted on a Spacewalk

NASA astronaut Alvin Drew participated in the STS-133 mission's first spacewalk as construction and maintenance continued on the International Space Station in 2011. During the six-hour, 34-minute spacewalk, Drew and fellow astronaut Steve Bowen (out of frame) installed the J612 power extension cable, move a failed ammonia pump module to the External Stowage Platform 2 on the Quest Airlock for return to Earth at a later date, installed a camera wedge on the right hand truss segment, installed extensions to the mobile transporter rail and exposed the Japanese "Message in a Bottle" experiment to space.
78/146 SLIDES © G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO

Guide Star in the Milky Way

Three of the four unit telescopes that make up ESO's VLT reflect the glow of the laser light being sent up by the fourth. From left to right, the unit telescopes are Antu, Kueyen and Melipal, all meaningful names in the Mapuche language. The laser guide star being generated by the fourth unit telescope (Yepun) is part of the Adaptive Optics system, state-of-the-art technology that corrects the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere to produce high quality observational data. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, can be seen as a bright band across the sky.
79/146 SLIDES © ESO

Caught by SPECULOOS

This Picture of the Week is a special treat: a first-light image from the newest resident of ESO’s Paranal Observatory, the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory. This planet-hunting machine aims to observe nearby but dim stars to locate exoplanets for other telescopes — such as ESO’s forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) — to study in detail. Comprising four one-metre telescopes, each named after one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons,  SPECULOOS promises to open up new frontiers in exoplanet research. This image, however, is obviously not of a faint star, but of a galaxy called NGC 6902. 
80/146 SLIDES © ESA/XMM-Newton (X-rays); MPG/ESO (optical); NASA/Spitzer (infrared). Acknowledgement: S. Carpano, Ma...

Past and Future Generations of Stars

This swirling palette of color portrays the life cycle of stars in a spiral galaxy known as NGC 300. Located some 6 million lightyears away, NGC 300 is relatively nearby. It is one of the closest galaxies beyond the Local Group – the hub of galaxies to which our own Milky Way galaxy belongs. Due to its proximity, it is a favorite target for astronomers to study stellar processes in spiral galaxies. 
81/146 SLIDES © NASA

Tropical Cyclone Oma

Tropical Cyclone Oma is seen as the International Space Station orbits 256 miles above the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
82/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gladders et al.Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Peering Into the Past

This picture showcases a gravitational lensing system called SDSS J0928+2031. Gravitational lensing can help astronomers study objects that would otherwise be too faint or appear too small for us to view. When a massive object — such as a massive cluster of galaxies, as seen here — distorts space with its immense gravitational field, it causes light from more distant galaxies to travel along altered and warped paths.
83/146 SLIDES © contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2019), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Sediment Plume at Sea

The Copernicus Sentinel-2B satellite captured this image on February 5, 2019,  just three days after heavy rainfall in Rome and the surrounding area of Lazio, Italy. It shows sediment gushing into the Tyrrhenian Sea, part of the Mediterranean Sea. 
84/146 SLIDES © Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA

Favignana, Levanzo and Western Sicily

Captured on 3 September 2018 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite, this image shows part of western Sicily in Italy and two of the main Aegadian Islands: Favignana and Levanzo. This false-color image included the near-infrared channel and was processed in a way that makes vegetation appear in bright red. The bright turquoise, near the port city of Trapani at the top of the image, and the Isola Grande in the middle of the image, depict salt marshes. Both the Saline di Trapani e Paceco Nature Reserve and the Stagnone Nature Reserve with their shallow sea waters, windy coast and abundant sunshine, make the area between Marsala, at the bottom of the image, and Trapani an ideal place for salt production. 
85/146 SLIDES © NASA

Timing is Everything

Einstein predicted that time slows down the faster you travel and the time-dilation hypothesis has since been proven by flying atomic clocks on aircraft. The three fastest human beings at the moment are NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques (pictured) and Roscosmos astronaut Oleg Kononenko who are orbiting Earth on the International Space Station at a speed of around 28 800 km/h. They are travelling so fast that they will return home to Earth after their six-month spaceflight 0.007 seconds younger than if they had stayed with their feet on the ground. But how do astronauts perceive time in space? Space Station crew report that time seems to speed up in microgravity so European researchers are trying to find out more by immersing astronauts in virtual reality and testing their reaction times. A virtual reality headset is used to block external visual cues that could influence the results. The experiment focuses on how astronauts estimate time duration as well as their reaction times. They are asked gauge how long a visual target appears on screen. 
86/146 SLIDES © NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute, National Optical Astrono...

New Horizons Spacecraft Returns Its Sharpest Views of Ultima Thule

The most detailed images of Ultima Thule -- obtained just minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1 -- have a resolution of about 110 feet (33 meters) per pixel. Their combination of higher spatial resolution and a favorable viewing geometry offer an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the surface of Ultima Thule, believed to be the most primitive object ever encountered by a spacecraft. This processed, composite picture combines nine individual images taken with the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), each with an exposure time of 0.025 seconds, just 6 ½ minutes before the spacecraft’s closest approach to Ultima Thule (officially named 2014 MU69). The image was taken at 5:26 UT (12:26 a.m. EST) on Jan. 1, 2019, when the spacecraft was 4,109 miles (6,628 kilometers) from Ultima Thule and 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth. 
87/146 SLIDES © 2019 – ESA/CNES – Sentinel

Ariane 6 Launch Complex Under Construction

The construction of the launch complex for the next generation of the Ariane launcher series is well under way at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
88/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity on the Clay Unit

ASA's Curiosity Mars took this image with its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Feb. 10, 2019 (Sol 2316). The rover is currently exploring a region of Mount Sharp nicknamed "Glen Torridon" that has lots of clay minerals. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.
89/146 SLIDES © ESO/M. Zamani

Sky lights

Audience members learn about the night skies during a show at the ESO Supernova Planetarium, a cutting-edge astronomy centre dedicated to making astronomy and ESO's work accessible to the public. The planetarium boasts a scientifically accurate three-dimensional astronomical database, ensuring a unique and authentic immersive experience.
90/146 SLIDES © JPL-Caltech, IPAC/NASA

A Hard (X-ray) Look

Bright green sources of high-energy X-ray light captured by NASA's NuSTAR mission are overlaid on an optical-light image of the Whirlpool galaxy (the spiral in the center of the image) and its companion galaxy, M51b (the bright greenish-white spot above the Whirlpool), taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

The bright green spots at the center of the Whirlpool and M51b are created by material surrounding supermassive black holes; additional X-ray sources in the vicinity contribute to the emission. The known ultraluminous neutron star is located on the left side of the Whirlpool.

91/146 SLIDES © GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA

Spring 2019 Eclipse Season Arrives

The SDO spacecraft is in another eclipse season as of Feb. 6, 2019. This begins a several week period when the Earth briefly blocks SDO's view of the Sun each day. In fact, because SDO orbits above the Mountain Time zone, the Earth passes between SDO and the Sun at about 7:20 UT (12:20 am MT) each orbit.

Eclipses are due to SDO's circular geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles above Earth. At the speed we are showing the frames, the eclipse is only a flicker. The still image shows that the edge of Earth, here about halfway across the Sun, looks quite rough due to the absorption of the 304 Å EUV light by our atmosphere.

92/146 SLIDES © JPL-Caltech/NASA

InSight Collecting Mars Weather Data (Artist's Concept)

This artist's concept shows NASA's InSight lander with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface. InSight's package of weather sensors, called the Auxiliary Payload Subsystem (APSS), includes an air pressure sensor inside the lander -- its inlet is visible on InSight's deck - and two air temperature and wind sensors on the deck. Under the deck's edge is a magnetometer, provided by UCLA, to measure changes in the local magnetic field that could also influence SEIS.

InSight's air temperature and wind sensors are actually refurbished spares built for Curiosity's Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS). Called Temperature and Wind for InSight, or TWINS, these two east- and west-facing booms sit on the lander's deck and were provided by Spain's Centro de Astrobiología (CAB).

93/146 SLIDES © IPEV/PNRA-N. Albertsen/ESA

Writing on the wall

Concordia station, located on a plateau 2 miles above sea level on the Antarctic peninsula, is first and foremost a research hub. Nestled at the very southern tip of Earth, where temperatures can drop to –112°F in the winter, and a yearly average temperature of –58°F, the station offers researchers the opportunity to collect data and experiment like no other place on Earth.

Among these researchers is a team of micrometeorite hunters scouting the snow and ice for traces of extra-terrestrial material less than .04 inches  diameter. Every year the amount of micrometeorites accounts for up to 1,100 tons of particles on Earth. Some of these fall in Antarctica where the frigid temperatures preserve these cosmic particles.

94/146 SLIDES © ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); M. Cordiner, CUA/NASA

Picturesque poison

In December 2018, the comet 46P/Wirtanen passed within 7.2 million miles of the Earth — about 30 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. This close pass gave astronomers the chance to observe the comet in detail, and ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) took full advantage. ALMA’s speciality is observing the cooler components of the Universe, such as gas and dust, and the array often focuses on specific molecules. This image is no exception, as it highlights one key thing: the hydrogen cyanide gas in the coma around the comet’s nucleus.

But why would scientists be looking for an infamous poison? Well, it turns out that hydrogen cyanide is as common as mystery novels have led us to believe — throughout the cosmos, at least! Because it’s a simple organic molecule that forms relatively easily, it’s been observed in comets, stellar atmospheres, and the clouds of dust and gas that exist between stars. This image builds on those observations by showing clearly the hydrogen cyanide emanating from the nucleus of this comet. Further ALMA observations showed that other, more complex organic molecules were present, too.

This matters because, while it may be poisonous to many organisms on Earth today, hydrogen cyanide may have played an important role in getting life started on Earth. It’s very reactive, so it easily interacts with surrounding chemicals to create new molecules — including some of those essential for life, such as amino acids. One theory posits that hydrogen cyanide, brought here in part by comets, jump-started organic chemistry here on Earth, eventually leading to the beginning of life. ALMA’s imaging of 46P/Wirtanen further supports the idea that comets could have brought this life-giving material to the early Earth.

95/146 SLIDES © JPL-Caltech/ASU/NASA

High Latitude Dunes

Today's VIS image shows a dune field on a crater floor in Mars' Terra Cimmeria. Dunes at high latitudes - near the polar caps - are affected by seasonal frost and ice. The interactions with frost/ice reduces the amount of movement of sand grains within the dunes. This changes the morphology of near polar dunes when compared to dunes at lower latitudes where ice/frost do not occur as frequently. This crater's latitude is 68 degrees south of the equator.
96/146 SLIDES © Copernicus Sentinel data/ESA

Jewels of the Maldives

Copernicus Sentinel-2 brings you some of the jewels of the Maldives for Valentine’s week. Arguably one of the most romantic destinations in the world, the Maldives lie in the Indian Ocean about 435 miles southwest of Sri Lanka. The nation is made up of more than 1,000 coral islands spread across more than 20 ring-shaped atolls. 

A number of these little islands can be seen in the image, with the turquoise colours depicting clear shallow waters dotted by coral reefs and the red colours highlighting vegetation on land. Different cloud formations can also be seen, the difference in appearance is likely to be due to the different height above the surface.

Like many low-lying islands, the Maldives are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise. In fact, the Maldives are reported to be the flattest country on Earth, with no ground higher than 10 feet and 80 percent of the land lying below 3 feet. With satellite records showing that over the past five years, the global ocean has risen, on average, .2 inches a year, rising seas are a real threat to these island jewels.

97/146 SLIDES © Airbus Defence and Space/ESA

Biomass mission

Set to fly in 2022, ESA’s Biomass Earth Explorer satellite with its 39-foot diameter radar antenna will pierce through woodland canopies to perform a global survey of Earth’s forests – and see how they change over the course of Biomass’s five-year mission.

Biomass will achieve this using a ‘synthetic aperture radar’ to send down signals from orbit and record the resulting backscatter, building up maps of tree height and volume. To see through leafy treetop to the trees themselves, Biomass will employ long-wavelength ‘P-band’ radar, which has never previously flown in space. It will have its signals amplified to travel down from a 373-mile altitude orbit down to Earth and back.

98/146 SLIDES © Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo

Adieu

Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, speaks during a mission briefing for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Feb. 13, in Pasadena, Calif.

99/146 SLIDES © ESA

From Earth with Love

“Valentine’s Day has struck again,” tweeted ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet when he posted this image of a heart-shaped lake in Mongolia. Thomas took this image from the International Space Station during his Proxima mission in 2017. 

100/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The Red Planet's Layered History

The geologic history of a planet is written in its layers. Erosion of the surface reveals several shades of light toned layers, likely sedimentary deposits, as shown in this image taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The most recent geologic features are the narrow sand dunes snaking across the top of all the rocks.

HiRISE operates in visible wavelengths, the same as human eyes, but with a telescopic lens that produces images at resolutions never before seen in planetary exploration missions. These high-resolution images enable scientists to distinguish 1-meter-size (about 3-foot-size) objects on Mars and to study the morphology (surface structure) in a much more comprehensive manner than ever before.

101/146 SLIDES  

Stars on the Dome

Audience members learn about the night skies during a show at the ESO Supernova Planetarium.
102/146 SLIDES © NASA

A New Record

Robert Curbeam currently holds the record for the most spacewalks during a single spaceflight. In this image from December 2006, Curbeam works on the port overhead solar array wing on the International Space Station's P6 truss during Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission. This was the mission's fourth spacewalk.

Curbeam conducted this spacewalk with European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang (out of frame), using specially prepared, tape-insulated tools, to guide the array wing neatly inside its blanket box during the 6-hour, 38-minute spacewalk. 

103/146 SLIDES  

Looking Back on a Golden Opportunity

In this navigation camera raw image, NASA's Opportunity Rover looks back over its own tracks on Aug. 4, 2010. 
104/146 SLIDES  

New Insight

NASA's InSight spacecraft and its recently deployed Wind and Thermal Shield were imaged on Mars on Feb. 4, 2019, by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

On Feb. 2, 2019, InSight's robotic arm placed the special shield over its seismometer on the Martian surface to protect the instrument from wind and extreme temperatures. The green object in this image is the InSight lander; the white dot just below it is the shield, which is especially bright and reflective. The shield is a little less than 6 feet (1.8 meters) away from the lander. The dark circles on either side of the lander are its solar panels. The total width of the lander with both panels open is 19 feet, 8 inches (6 meters).

The image also shows the darkened ground where InSight's retrorockets blew away lighter-colored dust as the lander touched down on Nov. 26, 2018. Scientists are interested in imaging this location over time to watch how quickly the lighter-colored Martian dust covers that darkened surface.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

105/146 SLIDES © ESA ©2005 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/ UPM/DASP/IDA

A Delicate View

This delicate view of Earth was captured in 2007 on the second of three Earth flybys made by ESA’s comet-chasing Rosetta spacecraft on its ten year journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The spacecraft also got a boost from Mars to set it on course with its destination.

106/146 SLIDES © Stanislav Volskiy, Chilescope Team/NASA

Fox Fur, Unicorn, and Christmas Tree

Clouds of glowing hydrogen gas fill this colorful skyscape in the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The telescopic image spans about 3/4 degree or nearly 1.5 full moons, covering 40 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264.

Its cast of cosmic characters includes the the Fox Fur Nebula, whose dusty, convoluted pelt lies near the top, bright variable star S Monocerotis immersed in the blue-tinted haze near center, and the Cone Nebula pointing in from the right side of the frame. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape is seen on its side here. Traced by brighter stars it has its apex at the Cone Nebula. The tree's broader base is centered near S Monocerotis.

107/146 SLIDES © NASA, ESA and L. Bedin (Astronomical Observatory of Padua, Italy)

Hide in Plain Sight

The universe is cluttered. It hosts myriad island cities of stars, the galaxies. Much closer to home are nebulae, star clusters and assorted celestial objects that are mostly within our Milky Way galaxy. Despite the vastness of space, objects tend to get in front of each other.

This happened when astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the globular star cluster NGC 6752 (located 13,000 light-years away in our Milky Way's halo). In a celestial game of "Where's Waldo?" Hubble's sharp vision uncovered a never-before-seen dwarf galaxy located far behind the cluster's crowded stellar population. The loner galaxy is in our own cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away (approximately 2,300 times farther than the foreground cluster).

108/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble & NASA, Cramer et al.

Wading Through Water

This striking image combines data gathered with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. It shows just a part of the spectacular tail emerging from a spiral galaxy nicknamed D100.

Tails such as these are created by a process known as ram-pressure stripping. Despite appearances, the space between galaxies in a cluster is far from empty; it is actually filled with superheated gas and plasma, which drags and pulls at galaxies as they move through it, a little like the resistance one experiences when wading through deep water. This can be strong enough to tear galaxies apart, and often results in objects with peculiar, bizarre shapes and features — as seen here.

109/146 SLIDES © ESO, A McLeod et al.

Large Magellanic Cloud

This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.
110/146 SLIDES © ESA/ATG medialab

Cheops

Artist impression of Cheops, the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, with an exoplanet system in the background.

In reality, Cheops will be situated in Earth orbit, and will study exoplanet systems from afar, making precise measurements of the planet’s size as it moves in front of its host star. These measurements, combined with known information about the mass of the planet based on independent observations, will allow the density of the planet to be estimated. This will constrain the planet’s possible composition and structure, indicating for example if it is predominantly rocky or gaseous, or perhaps harbours significant oceans. Cheops will focus particularly on bright stars hosting Earth- to Neptune-sized planets. This first-step characterisation of these worlds – many with no Solar System equivalents – is a critical process towards understanding the formation, origin and evolution of exoplanets in this size range.

111/146 SLIDES © NASA

View From Above

A portion of the International Space Station's solar arrays caps this nighttime view of the Earth's limb with an aurora as the orbital complex orbited 258 miles above Ukraine and Russia.
112/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech

Cozy Shelter

NASA's InSight lander deployed its Wind and Thermal Shield on Feb. 2, 2019 (sol 66). The shield covers InSight's seismometer, which was set down onto the Martian surface on Dec. 19, 2018. This image was taken by the Instrument Deployment Camera on the lander's robotic arm.
113/146 SLIDES © ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

An Intricate Crater

This intricate structure of an ancient river delta once carried liquid water across the surface of Mars.

The distinctive form of a delta arises from sediments that are deposited by a river as it enters slower-moving water, like a lake or a sea, for example. The Nile River delta is a classic example on Earth, and uncannily similar features have been spotted on Saturn’s moon Titan and – closer to home – Mars. While liquid water is no longer present on the surface of Mars, features in the left portion of this image provide strong evidence of it having played an important role in the history of the Red Planet.

114/146 SLIDES © ESA

Iraq Flood

This Copernicus Sentinel-1 image combines two acquisitions over the same area of eastern Iraq, one from 14 November 2018 before heavy rains fell and one from 26 November 2018 after the storms. The image reveals the extent of flash flooding in red, near the town of Kut.

115/146 SLIDES © S. Otarola/ESO

Winter Is Here

ALMAAntennas in the snow on a cold day in the Chilean winter. In front of the closest one someone has written a portentous phrase in the snow: "Winter is here."
116/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity's Selfie

A selfie taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Sol 2291 (January 15) at the "Rock Hall" drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge.

This was Curiosity's 19th drill site. The drill hole is visible to the rover's lower-left; the entire scene is slightly dustier than usual due to a regional dust storm affecting the area.

The selfie is composed of 57 individual images taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm. The images are then stitched together into a panorama. MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

117/146 SLIDES © Fotos Brillux, Sven Rahm Fotografie

Starry Skies

This image showcases a starfield projected on the dome of the planetarium at the heart of the ESO Supernova Planetarium. The state-of-the-art projection technology and scientifically accurate three-dimensional astronomical database create an authentic and immersive experience.
118/146 SLIDES © SpaceX

Space Station Over the Caribbean

Portions of Cuba, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos are seen from the International Space Station, as the orbital complex flew 252 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. At left is the aft end of the Progress 70 resupply ship from Russia attached to the station's Pirs docking compartment.

119/146 SLIDES © NASA

Ready to Roll

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s Crew Dragon attached, rolls out of the hangar at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Jan. 3, 2019. The rocket will undergo checks prior to the liftoff of Demo-1, the inaugural flight of a spacecraft designed to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. 

120/146 SLIDES © Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd./Nathanial Bradford

Beckoning Moon

The Moon is seen rising over the Goonhilly antenna in this image taken at 5:27 UTC (06:27 CET) on Monday, January 21, during an eclipse.

121/146 SLIDES © ESO/Daniele Gasparri

Guiding Light

Unit Telescope 4 (Yepun) uses laser light to create a guide star. Yepun is installed with state-of-the-art technology called Adaptive Optics, which enables the telescope to capture much sharper images by correcting the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere.

122/146 SLIDES © ESO/Daniele Gasparri

Pink Sky Delight

The sky glows a soft pink as the sun approaches the horizon at Cerro Paranal, a mountain south of Antofagasta, Chile. This is the location of ESO's VLT, the world's most advanced optical instrument, which is equipped to make the most of the 300 clear nights a year.

123/146 SLIDES © Airbus Defence and Space

Thermal Testing

A side view of ESA’s Solar Orbiter as it entered a vacuum chamber for thermal vacuum testing at the IABG test facility in Ottobrunn, Germany.

The spacecraft flight model had been readied by prime contractor Airbus in the UK. Set to launch in 2020, Solar Orbiter will observe the Sun and measure the solar wind.

Solar Orbiter’s main body will be protected from direct sunlight by a Sun-facing multi-layer titanium heat shield. The high-gain antenna seen here will be deployed from the body of the spacecraft to transmit data back to Earth.

The antenna’s black color is unusual. It is covered with the same kind of protective, high temperature coating as the front of Solar Orbiter’s heatshield, based on burnt-bone charcoal. Developed by Irish company ENBIO, this ‘Solar Black’ coating was selected because it can maintain the same color and surface properties despite years of exposure to unfiltered sunlight and ultraviolet radiation.

124/146 SLIDES © European Southern Observatory

Low Wind Effect

A demonstration of how the Low Wind Effect (LWE) changes astronomical images.
125/146 SLIDES © ESA

Floating ICE

Getting a science experiment on the world’s only floating outpost in Earth's orbit is a costly and time-consuming endeavour. ICE Cubes is ESA’s faster, lower cost answer to making science happen in space.

The International Commercial Experiment Cubes, or ICE Cubes, house modular experiments on the International Space Station.

The ICE Cubes service is based on a partnership between Space Applications Services and ESA and is part of ESA’s strategy to ensure access to weightless research in low Earth orbit.

126/146 SLIDES © ESO/Daniele Gasparri

Cosmic Arc

The Milky Way stretches across the sky over Paranal, the site of ESO's VLT. Paranal has about 300 clear nights per year, which, combined with the VLT's state-of-the-art technology, allows astronomers to observe the Universe in remarkable detail. An individual unit telescope at the VLT can see objects four billion times fainter than what can be seen with the unaided eye, while combining the telescopes allows astronomers to see details up to 16 times finer than can be discerned with the individual telescopes.
127/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Daedalia Planum

VIS image shows a small portion of the immense lava plains of Daedalia Planum. These flows originated from Arsia Mons, one of the three large Tharsis volcanoes. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. 

128/146 SLIDES © ESO

Paranal Observatory and the VLT

Aerial view of the VLT at Paranal Observatory. Visible are the four large 8.2-metre Unit Telescopes (UTs), as well as the smaller 1.8-m Auxillary Telescopes used during interferometry, when the UTs combine to act as one larger telescope. The telescope at the far rigtht of the observatory in the image is the 2.6-metre VLT Survey Telescope (VST), whose wide field of view is used to survey large areas of the sky in order to locate objects for larger telescopes, including the VLT, to observe.
129/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Cross-Section of a Complex Crater

This image shows a cross-section of a complex crater in Terra Cimmeria. Starting in the center, we see a series of peaks with exposed bedrock. These peaks formed during the impact event when material that was originally several kilometers below the surface was uplifted and exposed. The impact also melted the rocks. This eventually cooled, forming the pitted materials that coat the crater floor around the uplift. The rim of the crater was unstable, and collapsed inwards to form terraces, and we see additional pitted materials between the terraces and the rim. Just outside the crater we can see dark-toned material that was excavated and thrown out after the impact. 
130/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Impact Near the South Pole

This image shows a new impact crater that formed between July and September 2018. It's notable because it occurred in the seasonal southern ice cap, and has apparently punched through it, creating a two-toned blast pattern. The impact hit on the ice layer, and the tones of the blast pattern tell us the sequence. When an impactor hits the ground, there is a tremendous amount of force like an explosion. 
131/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

View of Ceres' Limb

Captured on May 19, 2018, this image shows the limb of Ceres at about 270E, 30N looking south. The spatial resolution is about 200 feet (60 meters) per pixel in the nearest parts of the image. The impact crater to the right (only partially visible) is Ninsar, named after a Sumerian goddess of plants and vegetation. It is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter. 

132/146 SLIDES © NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

October Revolution Island, Russia

Severnaya Zemlya is an archipelago in the Russian high Arctic. It was first charted in 1930, making it the last large archipelago on Earth to be explored. It consists of four main islands: October Revolution, Bolshevik, Komsomolets, and Pioneer. All are mostly glaciated; the glaciers have a characteristic dome shape. This image of the center of October Revolution Island shows two of these glaciers. The ice-free areas between the glaciers expose folded sedimentary rocks.
133/146 SLIDES © Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrées), TWAN

Matterhorn, Moon, and Meteor

Fans of planet Earth probably recognize the Matterhorn in the foreground of this night skyscape. Famed in mountaineering history, the 4,478 meter Alpine mountain stands next to the totally eclipsed Moon. In spite of -22 degree C temperatures, the inspired scene was captured on the morning of January 21 from the mountains near Zermatt, Switzerland. Different exposures record the dim red light reflected by the Moon fully immersed in Earth's shadow. Seen directly above the famous Alpine peak, but about 600 light-years away, are the stars of the Praesepe or Beehive star cluster also known as Messier 44. 
134/146 SLIDES © ESO

A Fleeting Moment in Time

The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time  — around 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this shell of glowing ionised gas — the last breath of the dying star whose simmering remains are visible at the heart of this image. As the gaseous shell of this planetary nebula expands and grows dimmer, it will slowly disappear from sight. 
135/146 SLIDES © Alberto Negro

Lunar Eclipse Over Lake Maggiore

The lunar eclipse that took place in the early hours of Monday 21 January kicks off a major year for our satellite. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first crewed landing on the Moon. After more than four decades, the Moon is again in the spotlight of space agencies worldwide as a destination for both robotic missions and human explorers. But first, the lunar eclipse. The phenomenon known as a total lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes directly between the Moon and the Sun, hiding the light that illuminates the surface of our satellite. As the Moon passes through the shadow of Earth it appears in orange and red hues. This is because a small portion of sunlight is refracted by the Earth's atmosphere and mostly red light reaches the Moon. This image of the eclipse at totality was taken at 06:23 CET by Alberto Negro.
136/146 SLIDES © ESA–A. Romeo

Moonwalk on Earth

ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer and ESA spacewalk instructor Hervé Stevenin analysing rock samples in close interaction with planetary geologists during the Pangaea-X campaign in November 2018. Pangaea-X is a test campaign that brings together geology, high-tech survey equipment and space exploration. Astronauts, scientists, operations experts and instrumentation engineers work side-by-side to advance European know-how of integrated human and robotics mission operations. An extension of ESA’s Pangaea geology training, the training involves working with the latest technologies in instrumentation, navigation, remote sensing, 3D imaging and geoscience equipment.
137/146 SLIDES © ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

Digitized Sky

The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time   — around 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this shell of glowing ionised gas — the last breath of the dying star whose simmering remains are visible at the heart of this image. As the gaseous shell of this planetary nebula expands and grows dimmer, it will slowly disappear from sight. The image is a colour composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), and shows the region surrounding ESO 577-24, faintly visible in blue at the centre of the image.
138/146 SLIDES © D. Michalik/NSF/SPT

Spotlight on Antarctica

This ethereal image was taken by Daniel Michalik, currently a research fellow at ESA. It was shortlisted as a finalist in the Royal Society photography competition in 2017, and went on to become the overall winner in the ‘Astronomy’ category – and it’s easy to see why. It captures a beautiful scene at the Earth’s South Pole in Antarctica, where the dry, cold conditions allow for observations of a number of rare celestial phenomena that are seen far less often elsewhere. The sight captured beautifully here by Daniel is a good example of such a phenomenon: a light pillar. The Moon illuminates a column of bright light between it and the frozen plateau below, creating a scene akin to a dramatic lunar spotlight beaming downwards. This is caused by moonlight reflecting from and refracting through ice crystals suspended in our planet’s atmosphere, producing a diffuse, eerie glow. 
139/146 SLIDES © NASA

Portrait Pose

Expedition 58 Flight Engineers Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency pose for a portrait inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos is pictured in the background inside the Unity module which connects the International Space Station's U.S. segment to the Russian segment.
140/146 SLIDES © ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Faber et al.

Messier Monday

This huge ball of stars — around 100 billion in total — is an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years away from us. Known as Messier 89, this galaxy appears to be perfectly spherical; this is unusual for elliptical galaxies, which tend to be elongated ellipsoids. The apparently spherical nature of Messier 89 could, however, be a trick of perspective, and be caused by its orientation relative to the Earth. Messier 89 is slightly smaller than the Milky Way, but has a few interesting features that stretch far out into the surrounding space. One structure of gas and dust extends up to 150 000 light-years out from the galaxy’s centre, which is known to house a supermassive black hole.
141/146 SLIDES © contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Gangotri, India

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Gangotri, one of the largest glaciers in the Himalayas and one of the main sources of water for the Ganges River. The Gangotri Glacier is in the Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. The head of the glacier can be seen in the lower-right of the image near the Chaukhamba Peak. From here, Gangotri flows around 30 km northwest, but like many of the world’s glaciers it is in retreat. Studies suggest that Gangotri has been receding for well over 200 years. Measurements have shown, that it retreated by as much as 35 metres a year between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s. While this has now reduced to about 10 metres a year, observations show that the glacier is thinning. The glacier’s terminus is called Gomukh, which means ‘mouth of a cow’, presumed to describe what the snout of this huge glacier once resembled. Importantly, the headwaters of the Bhagirathi River form here. 
142/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Sean Doran

Flyby of Captures Two Massive Storms

This image of Jupiter's turbulent southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed its most recent close flyby of the gas giant planet on Dec. 21, 2018. This new perspective captures the notable Great Red Spot, as well as a massive storm called Oval BA. The storm reached its current size when three smaller spots collided and merged in the year 2000. The Great Red Spot, which is about twice as wide as Oval BA, may have formed from the same process centuries ago.

 

143/146 SLIDES © Lukáš Veselý

Orion Over the Alps

Do you recognize this constellation? Through the icicles and past the mountains is Orion, one of the most identifiable star groupings on the sky and an icon familiar to humanity for over 30,000 years. Orion has looked pretty much the same during the past 50,000 years and should continue to look the same for many thousands of years into the future. Orion is quite prominent in the sky this time of year, a recurring sign of (modern) winter in Earth's northern hemisphere and summer in the south. Pictured, Orion was captured recently above the Austrian Alps in a composite of seven images taken by the same camera in the same location during the same night. Below and slightly to the right of Orion's three-star belt is the Orion Nebula, while the four bright stars surrounding the belt are, clockwise from the upper left, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph.
144/146 SLIDES © Liang Keyan/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images

China's 2D Satellite

A Long March-3B rocket carrying Zhongxing-2D satellite blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Jan. 11, in Liangshan, Sichuan Province of China. 
145/146 SLIDES © ESO

Fire in the Heavens

Screenshot of ESOcast 190: Chile Chill 12.
146/146 SLIDES © NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Discovering K2-138

This artist's illustration shows the planetary system K2-138, which was discovered by citizen scientists in 2017 using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope. Five planets were initially detected in the system. In 2018, scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence of a sixth planet in the system.

146/146 SLIDES

Photo gallery by photo services

Four teams of scientists worked independently to analyze their data, retrieved over 10 days in April 2017 by telescopes from Mexico to Antarctica to Hawaii.

The scientists didn’t talk to other teams about the details of their work as they analyzed their data. They didn’t even tell their families about the results, Bouman said.

But last summer, when the teams gathered at the Black Hole Initiative to share their findings, the startling similarities prompted an outpouring of celebration and awe.

“It was amazing to see that first ring, but it was even more unbelievable that we all produced the ring,” said Bouman, who is joining the faculty at the California Institute of Technology this year.

To verify what they had produced, the teams “tried to excise humans from the equation altogether,” Bouman said.

“We didn’t want to accidentally see a ring just because we wanted to see a ring,” she said. “But we kept getting the ring.”

The finding confirmed the existence of massive black holes that some skeptics had continued to doubt, even as science fiction and the entertainment industry have used them to captivate and terrify the earthbound.

Alan Marscher, a Boston University astronomer who led one of the teams, joined Bouman and others at a celebration in Washington on Wednesday.

“It’s not that common in science that you can get such a clean confirmation of such a theoretical explanation,” Marscher said. “It’s very satisfying that the basic theory we’ve been working with for decades now is, in fact, confirmed.”

MIT’s Haystack Observatory, located off Route 40 in Westford, helped with the project’s hardware and software.

Vincent Fish, a research scientist at the observatory, said Haystack served as an equipment clearinghouse, sending special components and systems for recording data from the black hole project to observatories worldwide.

Haystack also received disks with recorded data from those observatories and processed them in a supercomputer. The Westford site was one of two where the data were assembled. The other was in Bonn.

Fish said it was a major computational task: taking petabytes — equivalent to a million gigabytes — and compressing them to terabytes or less.

“At Haystack, we deal with the early part of the data,” he said. “I’m very proud. I’ve been working on this project since 2007. I’ve spent most of my professional life on this, and I’m just really glad we got such great results out of this,” Fish said.

The discovery is only a starting point, Bouman and Marscher said. Research techniques and algorithms will continue to be improved until, for example, the matter spinning around the edges of the black hole can be studied further.

In the meantime, there are congratulations to be accepted, colleagues to thank, and years of reminiscences to share. The outline of one of the universe’s most compelling mysteries — a vestige, perhaps, of the big bang itself — has been revealed.

There is an extraordinary amount of work to be done. But on Wednesday night, at least, there was time for hours of celebration in Washington at the National Air and Space Museum.

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